A short film on the making of the book and the people behind the hands.
Reviews
"What an incredible and moving set of images, thank you so much! I keep coming back to it again and again and it often makes me cry, but in a good way."
Sasha Constable
“A collection full of labour, love and lived experience.
Poignant, intimate and quietly powerful.”
Steve Knightley
“The book arrived today and it’s quietly extraordinary.
It carries a presence that I know will mean a great deal to its recipient.”
Private Collector
About the book
The project began in May 1996, during one of my weekly visits to my grandmother. She was ninety-five then, sitting in her garden beneath an apple tree; her wellingtons long abandoned because arthritis made them too painful to wear. I remember noticing her hands properly for the first time — gnarled and twisted, wrapped around her walking stick as if rooted there.
She had once wanted to be a musician, and played the piano beautifully, but the
expectations of the early twentieth century redirected her to the Slade, where
she became an accomplished artist. Those hands had played, painted, gardened,
chopped wood, cooked, cared, raised children, survived two wars, and lived
through a long marriage to a husband she outlived by almost forty years.
She was not fond or her hands — but she let me photograph them anyway. When I developed the image, it quickly became my favourite portrait of her. It was as though her whole life was present in those hands — biography written in skin, tendon and scar. That was the moment the project began. Over the decades that followed, the book grew through workshops, studios, kitchens,
farms and back rooms — places where skill is learned slowly and silently, through repetition, failure and persistence. Each portrait is paired with the small story of a life shaped by work, love, loss and time.
A Show of Hands is, simply, a study of what remains in us when words fall away.
Selected Press & Recognition
BBC Radio 4
BBC Online
The Sunday Telegraph
ABC Australia
National Geographic
New Philosopher
Black+White Photography Magazine
Digital Camera Magazine
Photography Monthly
The Reader
International Photography Awards (IPA)
Prix de la Photographie Paris (PX3)
FIAP
Foreword by Jonny Wilkinson
"In my hands lies my past, every skill I ever learnt and everything I ever did, the blood and the mud washed away a million times but still there and still with me everywhere I go.
My hands tell the story of me."
Jonny Wilkinson
"For what is a hand but a biography written in skin, tendon and scar"
to hold, to touch, to feel, to wash, to cook, to eat, to make, to sculpt, to draw, to catch, to hit, to mould, to play, to shake, to clasp, to clap, to flick, to sign, to protect, to paint, to compete, to drink, to strike, to spin, to mend, to harm, to heal, to sew, to stitch, to dress, to design, to conduct, to pluck, to strum, to drum, to stroke, to pray, to express, to say, to fold, to cross, to wring, to squeeze, to fondle, to tease, for what is a hand but to do all these.
Hardback, case-bound.
196 pages
Embossed cover with matt laminated fly.
Printed on 157gsm Hi-Q FSC matt art paper.
Containing over 95 photographs
Signed copies available
UK Delivery: 2-5 business days
International delivery available
Sealed in shrink-wrap (unless signed)
Shipped in secure book mailer.