Hand c. 1920

Albert Renger-Patzsch made this photograph, simply titled 'Hand,' at some point in the twentieth century. It's a silver gelatin print, which gives it that really lovely range of silvery grays. Hands, right? We all have them, and we use them every day, but how often do we really *look* at them? Renger-Patzsch has zeroed in on all the details, the lines, the wrinkles, the shapes. It’s like he’s saying, "Hey, this is amazing!" There is a strange kind of beauty in the close observation. That one finger that’s slightly bent looks almost cartoonish. I also love how the hand is placed in relation to the collar and jacket, the soft skin against the structure of the clothing. It reminds me a little bit of the work of the surrealist Claude Cahun, also working in photography, who saw the body as a material to be experimented with. In the end, it’s about the art of looking and seeing new possibilities in the everyday.