I don’t want to be a killjoy, but I think it’s time to dismantle a myth widespread by literate, artists and Facebook users ready to share their written deeds: it’s certainly true that the eyes are able to communicate with a great effect, but why not other parts of our body too?
Take, for example, the hands and think how many stories you can tell from a sign on their palm or from the way we use them. If it’s hard to visually imagine that, I happily disclose you the inspiration of my considerations: there’s, among millions of Instagram profiles, a little place handled by the photographer Hannah Ryan named @subwayhands, that tells through its photographs the reality of the hands that popular the New York subway every day. From the hand that holds a book in his/her chest to the ones that are creating a braid, from the one nervously stuck between them to the one that is clinging with others unknown hands in order to not fall, every shot is a detail of a scene that we don’t see, but we can work on it with our imagination, asking ourselves not only what’s happening around, but also what happens in the mind of their owner, what they’re trying to quietly say.
So the lesson of the days is to not underestimate the value of hands and have fun imagining circa 950 stories from as many photos that are in Hannah’s Instagram profile.