Family photo sessions have a recurring theme for me: I make a point of photographing people’s hands. Maybe that sounds strange, but again and again I’m drawn to the image of a loving hand on a small child’s face, a mother’s strong embrace or a little child reaching up to dad’s hand.
Hands are second only to the eyes as a window into the soul. You can see wisdom in the hands of a grandparent and innocence in the sweet puffy knuckles of a baby or toddler still learning to grab things. You can see generations through just one image of hands.
One of my first memories of both of my children was the way they grabbed on to my finger with their little fists. Newborns, just a few days old, holding on with a fierce grip. Touch is intimacy, and photography at its best shows what we mean to each other. That makes hands an important tell-all.
Hands also are expressive. Ballerinas are trained to elongate their fingers and use their hands to tell a story. One of the first questions I get during a family session is, “What do I do with my hands?” I often tell families to take a deep breath and relax their fingers, allowing them to settle into the moment with grace. And to reach out and connect to the ones they love, for siblings to reach out and hold hands, parents to embrace. All visual proof that you belong to each other.
There’s a reason that palm readers seem intriguing. We all speak volumes with our hands.
