Hand Project
By Noelle Pflanz
8 July 2008
Every person is different. Their faces created with intricate lines, curves, bumps that reflect their past and where they're from. But take away those faces and suddenly you're met with bodies that beside shape and color have no differences between them.
Being a high school student you see a pattern in dress amongst the hallways and the classrooms. Suddenly, everything starts to morph into one and the wonderful features that make up humanity begin to dissapear. So, I decided to take away the faces and focus on a part of the body that does everything: the hands.
I told my subjects, which were an assembled group of schoolmates, teachers, parents, and strangers on the streets, and had them pick one word. It didn't matter the word. It could be a verb, an adjective, a noun, an adverb, a swear word, a dirty word, a love word, etc. Anything and everything goes! They wrote that word on their palm and held them out in front of their face.
More importantly, that word reveals something about that person. I'm the only one that sees the identity of the hands owner; the placement of the hand and angle of the camera does not allow the owners hand to ever be revealed.
The whole point is to make your own decision and your own story about that hand and that one word. Some of them are very simple and maybe easy to understand. Others have a sense of deeper connection. Others were the first words that popped into my subjects minds.
Hands are so important. The fingerprints offer identity and they carry us through tasks of plenty. These hands can cause peace as well as destruction. They are us and we are them. Please enjoy the 'Hand Project'.
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