sometimesitmakesyou:

Within the past year I’ve noticed a repeating image-type amongst my photo scans: the hand (my hand) holding something. It’s not a trope that I can get sick of or shake off, nor would I want to. I just find this type of image so appealing and immediately communicative of “I was here. Then this happened.” And I know for a fact that the reason I’ve been taking so many of these is because I saw and subsequently really liked Conrad Brown’s photo of his hand holding a shattered iPhone.

Conrad Brown

I know Conrad wasn’t the first guy to invent this kind of picture, but it was the first one I really enjoyed. I have a miniature of it on my fridge. And as so often happens when I see something I really enjoy, it works its way into the way I photograph. These images are immediately communicative, immediately gratifying. They are journal entries, and for someone who has, despite all her best efforts, always sucked at keeping a journal, the ease and visual impact of this kind of diary-keeping is going to be too good to pass up. Easy shot? So what? There’s never been anything wrong with an ‘easy shot’ as far as I know, and it’s just as easy to ignore them if you’re sick of this kind of (admittedly) rebloggable  imagery.

Emanuel Ilagan

And why the need to share this kind of diary with the world, when it will have no context for the viewer? How to transmit the deep-rooted meaning behind it (maybe), the implications, the feelings, so that the viewer is in on how much this image really means? I don’t think it’s necessary. In an unnerving meta-moment towards the end of one of her journals (she was able to keep so many of them, damnit, and from early adolescence was quoting Tolstoy and poetically musing over the social implications of her blossoming sexuality), Sontag admits that no one writing a journal does not assume that someone, at some point, will read it. The ‘private’ diary is, from its inception, always written to be shared. And hers were. And these should be. But it doesn’t matter that you don’t get all the details. You don’t know the whole story of Conrad’s receipt (there is a great deal of personal history and sentiment behind it), but we’ve all eaten at cheap breakfast cafes and know how great/awful they can be. Bang. You’re in. You’re in the photo. We don’t need to know where Emanuel got that knotted branch, because it is a pretty thing in pretty surroundings. It can move us on aesthetics alone, and then maybe it will hit on our own memories and associations. Eman’s biscuit makes me think of Quasicrystals. But even before that, it’s a likeable image of a cheap cookie.


Ruth Skinner

Also easy to enjoy: photos of other people’s hands holding things. Eman’s most re-blogged photograph is a shot of hands holding crystals—admittedly one of the most beloved subjects of tumblr-generation artists. Alexi Hobbs has a great collection of images showing a woman’s hand in a variety of settings. I am presuming this hand belongs to the same woman who is the subject of so many of his personal images. The object of the photographer’s affection interacting with her surroundings in a manner that is subdued yet stunning. What is not to like?

Alexi Hobbs

Emanuel Ilagan

Ruth Skinner