“A collaborator friend arrived at the studio for a meeting. We were talking, and as I was watching her speak, I observed her making a particular gesture. It was a transformative moment for me, similar to the transformations that many of my clients experience during the journey of our work together. It was a moment when my practice opened up in a different direction.”

HAND. marks the launch of EDITIONS by Agenda Brown, now available for purchase. The HAND. collection explores the natural gestures and angles that sitters find instinctively during the photographic sessions. In doing so, these gestures reveal intimate insight into character and self expression.

Why HAND.? “I have had a lifelong connection and fascination for hands,” says Agenda, “Used for everything that we do in daily life, our hands can be the toughest things we possess whilst being used for the most delicate operations, their tactile sensitivity capable of detecting a single hair.”

This balance of strength and sensitivity is a metaphor for human nature, Agenda believes. “There’s a universal truth in hands that expands on the idea of embodied narrative and communication that have been core to my practice.” Our hands often speak for us in an unselfconscious way, to join bits of conversation together, punctuate emotion, and add layers of expression that shortcut, emphasise and signpost. At the same time they are our only other formal tool for communication – linguistic (sign language, semaphore) and narrative (Indian mudras, Japanese Noh, shadow puppetry).