Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Jeanne Dunning


In Jeanne Dunning’s work “Hand Hole,” a hand is curled in on itself with a bright light shone on it from the front. The outer rim of the hand, created by the forefinger and the thumb, fills up the entire frame of the photograph. This work has the effect of turning the hand, something so familiar and friendly, into a foreign, foreboding, even frightening thing. The curled finger segments tips, slightly disconnected because of the light, look like boulders, and the bits of blackness in between the boulders are where a monster could spring from to devour a wayward wanderer, who has haplessly stumbled into this cave. This experiment with proportion perfectly does what we’ve been talking about in class - it forces us to reevaluate our perception, and what we think we know, about the hand. I guess I don’t know the back of my hand well at all.

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