These Hands

Companion (pt. 1)

This semester, as you might know, I was in a photo class.  The course, ARTS 260, at the University of Illinois, is the introductory photography class.  The first half of the semester involved learning basic techniques, styles, and how to shoot.  We turned in a midterm project based upon four major themes (light and shadow, perspective, depth of field, and motion).  Then the second half of the semester started, in which we were to create our own project with a theme.  This project was to be 10 shots that fit into this theme.

Months ago, while in the shower, thinking about my day, the idea came to me that I needed to tell The Gospel with these pictures.  In some way, th

is story, however I could do it, needed to be told, again and again.  As I thought and prayed, it felt more and more compelling to tell the Gospel story from this perspective of photography and art.  As well, it felt more and more necessary to tell them in a contemporary style.  I couldn't just reshoot in photo form the paintings of the Renaissance.

As the project came about and started to develop, the idea was presented to me to use part of the body to tell these stories.  This started with a great night of drawing the Parable of the Four Seeds on the skin of my friends.  It slowly evolved from this into me telling stories from the four Gospel books with the hands.  Gone was the seeds parable and in was the Good Samaritan.  Gone was using marker for drawing and in was using it to write Hebrew on the body.

I told five stories with these images and I'm still working on how exactly I would present them, but what I do know is that I now have told five tales with these images.  Each pair of images with the same name tells a story.  There is writing on Hebrew on the skin, and in the title of the photos is the meaning of the word.  I hope that this project may stimulate you, regardless of your lifestyle, beliefs, gender, color, or love/hate of art.  This project is dear and close to me, and I hope that you are able to see the effort I put into it, trying to create these situations and communicate as effectively as I can with just two images per story.

Companion (pt. 2)

Here is the flickr link to the art project "These Hands"