Hands - a portrait series
This series of portraits does not show traditional portraits where the face draws all the attention, but portraits of hands. After the face, a hand is the most expressive part of the body and tells a lot about the person behind it.
Not surprisingly, hands are the subject of the oldest known human depictions, simply a silhouette created by spitting dye over a hand.
(The slideshow shows the composition first, then the individual images)
By isolating hands as subjects in their own right, they tell a story all their own. Are they frivolous, or subdued? Are they hands that have worked, or have they suffered very little physical discomfort? Are they rich or poor? Male or female perhaps? Young or old?
The portrait series also tells of a contrast in imagery between the Baroque - the period when most of the painted hands in this series were created - and contemporary art.
Photography, and especially since the advent of the cheap camera, democratised image-making. Whereas a painted portrait was still the exclusive domain of the rich and famous, today anyone can have a portrait taken. If needed just with the smartphone.
To accentuate this contrast, for the photography of today's hands, people were chosen who earn their living with their hands. Who make something with their hands. Who get their hands dirty.
The paintings hardly show this. So we see nobles and rich merchants from the 17th century next to today's craftsmen: the baker and the butcher, an artisan eyeglass maker, a double bass maker, a bicycle maker, a hairdresser... Yet a unity emerges throughout the series. Through the use of colour, through the composition. And by the hands themselves, of course, which are eminently human. That is what connects all the images.
Many thanks to:
Atelier Bram De Man, Boulengier, Cut Me, CyCLO Fietspunt Centraal, Cyclup Atelier-Boutique, LSCRNR, Lunetier Ludovic, Music Fund, Prison de Marche-en-Famenne, Spek&Boonen
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (B), Musei Vaticani (VA), Ptujski Grad (SLO), Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (NL)