There are themes one encounters and thinks: interesting. There are others that make one pause briefly, jot down a note, and then reliably file them away in that mental archive where approximately forty-seven other ideas for photographic series are already waiting for resurrection. And then there are themes that make it clear almost immediately that they must be photographed.
“Free Hands” belonged to the third category.
For some time now, I have been applying to various open calls. This is a distinct, at times slightly absurd chapter of artistic work. One deals with themes, deadlines, file sizes, artists’ biographies, and the remarkable art form of reducing one’s own work to a prescribed number of characters. Then the documents are uploaded and handed over to that mixture of jury decision, chance and statistical humility that the procedure demands.
Nevertheless, I consider these applications worthwhile. Not merely because of the admittedly modest likelihood of actually being selected. They force me to examine my own work, to formulate series more clearly, and occasionally to respond to themes that lie outside the stock of ideas already at hand.
It was through one of these calls that I came across the theme “Free Hands”. The phrase was broad enough to allow for very different interpretations, yet precise enough for images to emerge immediately. Hands are tools, signs, expressions and actions. They write, protect, demand, refuse, hold, touch, cover and bind. They can release and restrain, help and injure, exercise power and establish boundaries. There is probably no other part of the human body that is at once so ordinary and so heavily charged with meaning.
I could, of course, have selected an existing series and explained convincingly in the accompanying statement why it had always been concerned with free hands. With enough text, almost any work can be connected to almost any subject. An image with a raised arm becomes an act of self-empowerment, a concealed face a resistance to social attribution, and two hands within the frame already prove almost everything.
That would not even have been necessarily wrong. It simply would not have been what interested me about the call. I did not want to place the theme retrospectively over an existing body of work. I wanted to interpret it.
That was the beginning of Manus Liberae.
Not Hands Alone
At first, only one thing was clear: the hands had to be the true protagonists. They were not to lie decoratively within the image or merely complete a pose. Every gesture had to be an action. The hand was to write, call, refuse, seek, erase, hold, touch, command, cover, bind and bear witness.
This immediately raised the next question: would the gesture alone be enough?
A hand placed before the body can protect or repel. It can express shame, restraint, fear, control, or simply uncertainty about where to put it during a photograph. A raised hand can command, swear an oath, greet, bless, or summon a waiter. Gestures are powerful, but rarely unambiguous.
It was precisely this ambiguity that interested me. At the same time, I wanted to give the series a linguistic structure—not as an explanation beneath the image, but as part of the body itself.
This led to the idea of assigning each image a Latin verb in the first person: scribo—I write; voco—I call; nego—I refuse; peto—I seek or demand; deleo—I erase; teneo—I hold; tango—I touch; iubeo—I command; tego—I cover or protect; ligo—I bind; testor—I bear witness.
The first person was essential. The action is not described from outside. It is not “she writes”, “she refuses”, or “she is bound”. The figure speaks for herself: I write. I call. I refuse. I act.
The body therefore does not become a passive surface for projection, but the bearer of its own statement.
Gesture Alone or Writing
For a long time, I had not decided whether the hands and their gestures would be sufficient on their own. A purely physical solution could have been very reduced: body, hands, gaze and light, nothing more. Precisely because gestures are so ambiguous, this would have had its own appeal.
In the end, however, I chose writing. It was not intended to explain the images like a caption, but to place the respective action explicitly in the first person. The word indicates a direction, while posture, gaze and hands expand, confirm or question its meaning.
The light remains strict throughout the series and shapes body and gesture. Here, however, it does not assume the role of an independent sign. That role belongs to the writing. Word, body and action form the statement together without determining one another completely.
That was important to me. The photographs were not to become illustrations of Latin vocabulary. Ligo is not simply an image corresponding to the dictionary entry “I bind”. Tego does not explain covering in the manner of a textbook. The word opens a field of meaning, the gesture gives it form, and the expression of the person depicted may alter it once again.
In teneo, holding may mean protection, but also clinging to something that should long since have been released. Tego may mean to cover, to protect, to conceal or to deny access. Deleo speaks of erasure, yet the writing remains visible. In ligo, the model’s own hair becomes the band she draws around her neck. The hand binds and at the same time suffers under what it does.
Free hands are evidently not automatically harmless hands.
Why Bastarda?
Once the decision in favour of writing had been made, the next, by no means minor question arose: which script?
A modern, clean typeface would have been easy to read. It would also have created the impression of graphic design subsequently applied to the body. A Capitalis Rustica would have conveyed a clear classical severity, but might have been too ordered and too monumental for this series. Kurrent would have introduced a private, almost biographical dimension. Cancellaresca, in turn, would have produced an elegant, humanist movement.
I chose Bastarda.
This historical script stands between broken and cursive forms, between order and movement, between representative effect and handwritten immediacy. Its letters possess something forceful and, at times, resistant. It is decorative without being pleasing, and its ductus already contains a certain tension.
That suited the images.
The writing was not to sit on the body like a label. It was to merge with it, run across curves, become distorted, disappear in places and re-emerge elsewhere. The body is not, after all, a sheet of paper, even if under studio conditions it occasionally has to behave with similar patience. Ribs, muscles, skin tension and movement alter every letter. What would be easily legible on a flat surface becomes fractured, stretched or fragmented on the body.
For me, this is an essential part of the work. The writing is not merely transferred. It becomes physical.
Susi
The fact that the series could take shape in this form is due in large part to Susi, with whom I worked for the first time on this project.
A new model always involves a certain risk. One can describe concepts, show references, and speak about expression, bodily tension and light. Whether a shared visual language will actually emerge becomes apparent only in the studio. A person may pose with great technical skill and still be wrong for the subject. Conversely, someone with little conventional modelling experience may suddenly develop precisely the presence an image requires.
With Susi, it became clear very quickly that she would not merely execute the actions. She understood them.
That is a considerable difference.
Susi has professional acting training, and this is exceptionally valuable for my work. Someone with acting training does not think only about how a pose looks, but about the inner impulse from which a movement arises. A raised hand is then not merely a formal arrangement of arm and fingers. It becomes a command, an oath, a refusal or a call because the entire body participates in the action.
This is crucial in a reduced visual language. When props, clothing and narrative setting are absent, there is very little behind which one can hide. A minute change in the gaze, muscular tension or posture can determine whether an image appears credible or merely posed.
For this series, I did not need a graceful succession of elegant positions. I needed resistance, concentration, authority, vulnerability, tension and, at times, a physical discomfort that remained perceptible in the photograph. The hands had to be doing something, and the entire body had to respond to that action.
Susi brought not only experience but also a highly developed sense of expression. Her acting training did not manifest itself in exaggerated theatricality, but in her ability to give a gesture an inner foundation. In Nego, it is not only the raised hands that refuse; the gaze establishes the boundary. In Iubeo, authority does not arise through costume or insignia of power, but through posture and presence. In Ligo, the action becomes physically uncomfortable without deteriorating into a mere representation of pain. In Testor, the oath-taking hand and the hand upon the chest are enough to transform a pose into a solemn declaration.
She committed herself to a form of work that was neither comfortable nor routine. The writing had to be applied, the body position adjusted to the light, and hands and arms often held under tension for an extended period. Some positions work very well as fleeting movements but lose their force the moment they have to be sustained for the camera. Others initially appear unspectacular and only develop their effect under the light.
Susi was able to do both: maintain physical precision and keep the expression alive.
That is rare, and particularly valuable for the way I photograph.
The Body Without Costume
As in many of my works, the unclothed body in Manus Liberae is not a means of seduction. It is, rather, a body without costume.
Clothing would immediately have situated the images socially and historically. A dress, a shirt, a uniform or even an apparently neutral piece of fabric carries roles, periods and social attributions with it. The unclothed body withdraws these signals. It becomes a surface for light, writing and action.
This does not mean that it is neutral. Bodies are never neutral. They carry age, experience, vulnerability, strength and history. But in these images they carry no additional role assigned to them by costume.
The writing, in a sense, replaces clothing. It does not designate the social status of the figure, but her action.
A Series for an Open Call—and Beyond
Manus Liberae arose from an open call. I do not conceal this, nor do I regard it as a flaw. Artistic works do not always have to emerge from a nocturnal revelation, preferably accompanied by heavy rain and an existential crisis. Sometimes a series simply begins with a theme, a deadline and the question of whether one genuinely has something of one’s own to say about it.
What matters is what emerges from it.
I did not want to adapt an existing work rhetorically. I wanted to discover what “free hands” might mean within my own visual language. This led to Latin verbs, historical script, strict light and a body that is at once bearer, speaker and site of the action.
Whether the series will be selected for the open call is now no longer in my hands. That is probably the final small irony of the project.
The images themselves remain.
And perhaps that is, in any case, the more reliable form of freedom.