Emma Randolph

Everybody has a routine of tasks that they complete each and every day of their lives. Whether it be cooking, practicing an instrument, massaging, or even reading, you are using your bodies constantly. Within each of these tasks your body parts have individual tasks, from strumming to pressing, your hands are consistently being used. My main goal with this project was to document every day activities but only through photographs of hands. I chose to only focus on hands because I think that hands are very interesting and depending on the activity, have different individualized jobs. Through these pictures of hands I wanted to give a sense of who the people are and what they value in life based on the movements and uses of their hands.

I chose to focus on leisure activities and hobbies rather than work because almost everybody works and that is what ties all humans together, but it is what the humans do outside of working that really sets them apart from one another. While shooting my concentration I became very intrigued not only by the movements and uses of the hands but by the hands themselves. Some were broad and hefty while others were small and dainty, some dry and cracked showing a lifetime of wear and tear and others perfectly moisturized. Our hands can tell a lot about a person and that is exactly what I wanted to portray through this body of work. By focusing on the hands the viewer is left wondering a lot about the subjects due to the minimal exposure to what they actually look like. This was done purposely because I wanted to photograph a body part that everyone has but show how differently it can be used depending on lifestyles. I am overall very happy with how my body of work turned out because there is a lot of variety in hands and activities that gives a snippet of the immense uses that hands have in everyone's lives.