The Hands Tell the Story, or Do They?

I'm in Manhattan for a quick two-day visit and this morning I headed straight for Sotheby's auction house to get a look at the exhibition of "A Show of Hands: Photographs from the Collection of Henry Buhl."

This photograph from the collection is by Herbert Bayer, called "Lonely Metropolitan"

Here's what the Sotheby's catalogue has to say about this amazing collection:

Sotheby’s is pleased to announce the sale of A Show of Hands: Photographs from Collection of Henry Buhl.  The Buhl Collection comprises one of the most significant collections of photographs in private hands today.  Put together with wit, perception, and passion by Henry M. Buhl, the collection shows the hand in a variety of roles—as a vehicle for emotion, an object of scientific study, and a metaphor for the human condition, among many others.  Using hands as a focal point, the collection spans the evolution of the photographic medium, from the 1840s to the present day. 

As you know if you saw my blog post "Found Art -- A Magical Show of Hands"  back in April, I've been fascinated by representations of hands for a long time and have been collecting them -- especially folk art versions, like the "Hand of Christ".  I don't collect hand photographs--although many of my early daguerreotypes show portraits of people with very strange arrangements of their hands, because early photographers spent a great deal of time posing the hands so they would look graceful and not overly large (or foreshortened.)

Henry Buhl's collection of photographs is going on sale at Sotheby's starting tomorrow, Weds. Dec. 12 , as well as two more sessions on Thursday.  I will not be there--I'll be back in Massachusetts, and the estimates on these photographs range from $500 to tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars--putting them all a little above my collecting budget.

But seeing the exhibit reminded me once again how  hands are so laden with emotion, so revealing of character, so completely charged with  meaning,  that after looking at some of the hundreds in the exhibit I was exhausted and emotionally drained.  (Think babies' hands, dismembered hands, bleeding hands, hands caressing and killing, politicians and street beggars extending their hands, rock fans waving their hands in the air, mothers' hands holding out starving babies, fashion models and dancers' hands--and a lot of erotica as well.)

Well, it was quite a morning, but it also got me to thinking about why hands fascinate me so.  

Because I paint portraits, I often cut out of newspapers images of people in the grip of great emotion,  (because you can't get a model to mimic true emotion and hold it) and I've noticed that when people suddenly see something horrific, they almost always put their hand over their mouth.  Like this:

Getty Images

This happens to be a photo of Princess Maxima and Prince Willem Alexander of the Dutch royal family, reacting in horror in May of 2009 when an attacker drove a car into a crowd of spectators.  But if you come across a news photo of bystanders reacting to, say, a corpse in the street, or a terrible accident, you'll see they all have a hand over their mouth. Why?  Why do we instinctively do this?

from Vanity Fair

And here's another photo that caught my attention.  It's President Obama in the situation room telling his security advisers that he has launched the raid that ultimately succeeded in killing Bin Laden.  Notice that every man among his listeners has his hand over his mouth--not in horror, but what are they saying?  Only Hillary is not doing this, but later, when Obama and advisers are watching the raid live on the screen, she has her hand over her mouth in what looks like horror.

I suggest that in the first photo the men listening--the security advisers--are dubious about the  wisdom of the raid but are not about to say anything.  Or perhaps they're afraid it will fail and don't want to share that.  What do you think this gesture, which is sort of a "I'm-thinking-hard" pose, really mean?

That's all I have to say right now about hands, but seeing the Buhl  collection in person was not only exhausting, it was also inspiring, and the photographer in me wants to try a whole lot of new ways to photograph hands to tell a story.

Found Art – A Show of Magical Hands

Not long ago I read that  Sotheby’s is planning to sell  a collection of photographs of hands amassed by businessman Henry Buhl in the 19 years since he paid  $75,000 for his first:  a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz of the hands of Georgia O’Keefe.  Sothebys will sell 400 pieces from the Buhl collection on Dec. 12^th  and 13th, including the original Stieglitz image, which is estimated to go for over a million dollars.

 Reading this delighted me, because I too have been collecting hands for years, (not photos, but all kinds of representations of hands.)  None of my collection will ever be sold by Sotheby’s, but at least now I can consider my collection “art”.

 Hands have always seemed to be spooky, magical, beautiful and filled with power.  I looked up  “hand” in “The Book of Symbols” from Taschen and learned that, on the walls of the cave of Pech-Merle in France, prehistoric artists outlined their hands in red ochre and black cinder over 20,000 years ago near  drawn images of horses.  Even at the dawn of human consciousness, the image of a hand seemed magical and important.

The prehistoric hand print in the cave reminded me of what a friend said after visiting a Hindu temple in India where the walls were marked with the red-henna handprints of young widows on the way to their death, because their religion decreed that they had to commit suttee— a widow must throw herself on the funeral pyre of her dead husband . “All those hands,” he said sadly.  “They were so small and there were so many of them.” 

 Of course in a Hindu wedding the hands of the bride and groom (and the guests), lavishly decorated in henna with symbolic figures at the mehndi,  are important symbols. Here are the hands of the bride, Neela, at the fabulous wedding in Jodhpur that we attended several years ago.  The bride and the groom had their feet and hands decorated.  Both their names were worked  into the bride's design--which the groom had to discover for himself  (If you want to know more, check out my post “The Hindu Wedding – At Last!”).

 Here are some photos from my collection of hands.  As I’ve mentioned before, I collect way too many things, and I love them all and consider them “found art.”

Probably the most valuable in my hand collection is the two-part Namaste altar  (at top) showing the elephant god Ganesh and Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, each seated on their animal mounts (the rat and the owl).  When the ivory hands are closed, they form the traditional greeting “Namaste” which means “”The divine in me honors and recognizes the divine in you.”

 In the kitchen I have one wall covered with objects that incorporate hearts, (told you I collect too much) and several of these are the “heart-in-hand”  design that I always thought was an early-American kind of valentine.  But I discovered that the heart-in-hand is actually a symbol of charity, which originated with the Shaker sect: “Put your hands to work and your hearts to God.”  It is also a symbol of the fraternal order of Odd Fellows.

 The Victorians were very big on hands—in vases, pin dishes, calling cards, brooches and just about everything.  Here is a small display case of tiny hands.  The metal ones at the top are part of a drinking game.  The one at the right reads “You pay -- Jack Daniels -- 1866”.

The largest hand in my collection is this one carved out of wood—it’s about two feet across and I put a carved wooden angel in it.  (Did I mention that I also collect angels?)   Next to it, to show its size, is an articulated hand of the kind used by artists as a model.

 I absolutely love this “Hand of Christ” also known as “La Mano Poderosa”—“The most powerful hand”.  It symbolizes the wounded hand of the crucified Christ with representations of the Holy Family on the fingers—Baby Jesus on the thumb (because he’s the most important), Virgin Mary on the index finger, followed by St Joseph, then St Anne and St. Joachim, Mary’s parents.  The red marks represent Christ’s wounds.

All hands seem magical.  The red one above, from Italy, is making a gesture meant (I think) to ward off the evil eye.  The hand in the center is a reliquary that is holding a bone that is probably said to be from a saint and therefore efficacious in sending one's requests to Heaven. 

It’s no wonder that we cherish plaster impressions of our toddlers' little hands and use fingerprints for identification—each hand  is unique and hands can be as eloquent as faces.