Manus, Latin for hand

Manus grew out of an earlier project, "I have not photographed everything yet, but it is on my list," in which I photographed people in museums taking pictures of the art with their smartphones, and set those pictures against quotations from Susan Sontag's On Photography of 1977.

The obvious next step would have been to contrast them with the visitors who put their phones away and simply look. I tried it. The comparison turned out flat — cameras on one side, no cameras on the other, and nothing gained. So I stopped photographing phones and faces and photographed only the hands. Again and again I found them folded behind the back. I read that posture as a kind of surrender: the hands have been put out of work, they have given up control, while the gaze stays entirely with the picture. Nothing shows me more clearly how much attention someone is paying than their idle hands.

Manus I

Manus II

Manus III

Manus IV

Manus V

Manus VI

Manus VII

Manus VIII