Hands

2021, photo, 30 x 40 cm

(…)The series Hands, created in 2021, consists of 20 photographs, and each shows the hands and arms of the same man. These studio photographs reproduce the gestures of a politician's hands, or more precisely, they juxtapose a selection of hand movements that accompanied the speeches of several politicians. Dramaturge Géza Morcsányi, who had recently played the male lead in Ildikó Enyedi's film On Body and Soul, was asked to re-enact the gestures. In all the pictures, the bare forearms appear in uniform light, casting the arm’s shadow on a neutral wall in the background, making the movements more dramatic and expressive. The gestures are out of space and time; there are no references to the geographical, social, or political context, nor to the cultural context that is essential for interpretation. Meaning depends almost exclusively on the arrangement of the photos in the series; and it’s also on this basis that the viewer must decide whether to attach a single narrative to the photographs. The images, which can be juxtaposed in different sequences and settings, can form not only a story but also an imaginary (fragmentary) lexicon of gestures. (…)

József Mélyi: Presence and Meaning. Hand motifs in the art of Marcell Esterházy