Elliott Erwitt's Handbook
In introducing this album of black-and-white photographs, Charles Flowers cites an anthropologist's contention that 60 percent of communication is nonverbal, and most of that is done with the hands. Flowers also says no one lacks an opinion about his or her hands, investing them with as much personality as the face. Those and other notions Flowers plants induce greater-than-usual consciousness of the implications of these 100-plus images. The adult hands securing a little child's swimsuit appear full of everyday love, while the hand of a man fingering the waist of a woman's bikini bottom first implies penny-ante lust, then, perhaps, pestering, or maybe grooming. The same gesture--hand to forehead as if supporting a heavy mind--reads as weariness in an aged nun, as penitence in an old man seated by what seems to be a sermonizing preacher. That such involving, information-rich interpretations arise so readily is a testament to Erwitt's mastery of selection, composition, focus, and lighting.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved