Erin

Mohit

Stacey

Ahmed

Ruthie

Taylor

Steve

What I hope this series does is provoke thought about the activities that many of us do every day, and how those might reify or defy social gender patterns. Each of these pictures depicts hands doing something that I think many would, on some level, associate with the gender opposite that of the person actually depicted. I wanted the viewer to question the identity of each figure; I hoped to provoke a moment of surprise or speculation about who these people are. Originally I chose to focus on hands because I think that they are an interesting visual representation of personal agency in many ways; they show what we choose to do, and perhaps draw questions of how and why we choose to do it. After I began, I was interested to find that picturing hands alone can create a certain degree of gender ambiguity in some cases. I hope that this potential ambiguity draws further questions about the expectations we have for the activities and actors presented in these photos.
None of these photos were contrived; the activities are all ones engaged in by the subjects without urging from me. I was trying to point out, with this series, the fact that many people defy overarching gender expectations on a daily basis, largely without awareness. So I tried to get shots, as candid as possible, of people I know casually doing things which I thought were interesting from a viewpoint of social roles and expectations. Among other things, I tried to represent the nurturing and domestic side of men, and the technically skilled and creatively inspired (rather than just inspiring) side of women.