I began photographing hands because I was interested in how much of a life can be carried through gesture. A hand can reveal something without offering a full portrait: the repetition of work, the intimacy of care, the habits we inherit, the things we hold onto, and the marks that time leaves on the body.
The photographs move through ordinary acts — sewing, preparing food, handling money, caring for a child, breastfeeding, praying, knitting, writing. None of these gestures is extraordinary on its own. Their meaning comes from accumulation. Repeated over years, they become part of how a life is built and remembered.
I am especially drawn to the way women’s lives are registered through these small physical actions. The body becomes an archive: of labour and tenderness, responsibility and ritual, memory and age. Rather than describing the people in the photographs directly, I look for the traces their lives leave in movement, touch and repetition.
The Work of Living is not intended as a catalogue of hands. It is an attempt to stay close to the quiet physical language through which everyday life is carried forward — from one gesture, and sometimes from one generation, to the next.
