Hands signal. Hands hold. Hands reach. Hands probe. Hands caress. 

 

We pass things hand to hand: tools, batons, food, mail, bacteria and viruses. 

 

We carry things in our hands: sacks of coal, plates of salad, weapons and flowers. 

 

The hand is the most distinctive part of human anatomy. In his famous book, ‘Your Inner Fish,’ Neil Shubin said that when he did his first human dissection as a student it was only when the cadaver’s hands were exposed that he felt a connection to the body under his knife. “What is it about the hand that seems so quintessentially human?” he writes. “The answer must, at some level, be that the hand is a visible connection between us; it is a signature for who we are and what we can attain. Our ability to grasp, to build, and to make our thought real lies inside this complex of bones, nerves, and vessels.”

 

The hand is us.

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DOUBLE TAP ON THE MUD HAND PRINT TO BEGIN THE SLIDE SHOW WITH IMAGE COMMENTARIES