Hand Signal Photography

As I was feeling deflated after little success with trying to produce decent outcomes, I decided to take a step back and revert to something I felt I knew I was good at. I thought back to the Oripeau project, and how when I had an idea the first thing that I would do was find something to photograph. I decided to start exploring the hand signals in jazz that I had discovered in my research.

Using my mum as a hand model, I took around 300 photos in total of her doing just some of the hand gestures that Jazz musicians will use during improvised 'jam sessions'. I am really happy with the outcomes and can't wait to start producing covers with them. I tried to produce as big a variety of photos I could by changing the lighting around and using flash. I started simple, then used a lamp to start making the lighting really dramatic, often dark. I wanted to try and capture the atmosphere of a jazz club and the drama of an improvised piece. I began getting my mum to move her hand around while she was making the gestures so that I could capture some movement, and these are my favourite images - I plan to crop them down to become more abstract.