Visual Studies / 029

Body & Gesture

Melbourne, New York City and Phnom Penh

2023–2026

6 images

The Subject at Hand

A photographic study of hands that emerge from the background of street scenes and become the subject through repetition, attention and sequencing.

Hands keep turning up in my photographs. Sometimes I photograph them deliberately. Other times I notice them later, when I look back through the work. Bringing those pictures together makes the repetition visible without making the gestures mean the same thing.

Repetition changes the status of the hand in the photographs. In one frame it can remain incidental. Across the sequence it begins to insist on itself. Sequencing makes that recurrence visible without making the gestures equivalent. The photographs remain distinct, but the motif becomes harder to ignore.

The edit also changes how the photographs are read. Once the hand becomes the thread between them, details that first seemed secondary start to carry more weight, and the viewer begins to anticipate another appearance. At Hand stays with that shift in attention: between what was encountered in the street and what becomes visible only through repetition.

  • Oral Intervention

    Oral Intervention

    Fleeting, intimate gestures of touching mouths in public spaces.

  • Nailshop

    Nailshop

    Fingernails as bodily edges where grooming, self-fashioning and social judgment meet.

  • Earworm

    Earworm

    Exploring intimacy through ear-touching and whispering.

  • Eye Contact

    Eye Contact

    Exploring the balance of trust, power, and vulnerability in human eye interactions.

  • Intimate Intervention

    Intimate Intervention

    Gestures of touch transforming shared environments into sites of intimacy.

  • Believe Me

    Believe Me

    A photographic study of certainty as public performance, where faith, fraud and persuasion compete for another person’s attention.