Handful
This is an ongoing series about hands and the feelings and roles they embody and perform. This selection is from Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City, and my hometown Portland, Oregon.
Often described as the most symbolized part of the human body, hands appear in all creative arts throughout the ages as tools for an enormous range of behavior and beliefs. We use them for connecting to others, and to push things away. They can signify friendship or danger, offer praise or express condemnation, or command action or passivity. Fortune tellers use them to reveal the future. They’re a remarkable part of anatomy that ‘speak’ through touch and motion for ourselves and our cultures.
Eliot Allen
