Pierre Jahan : Speaking With Hands

The hand is a prevalent theme in the work of Pierre Jahan, and more generally in photography. This prevalence is due, in part, of photopgraphy's unique ability to capture fragments and detail, ephemeral movement, but also to reconstitute it through the montage techniques.

 

Pierre Jahan depicts the theme of the hand in a poetic context. It often appears disembodied, fragmented, and in unusual and strange circumstances, reinforcing a Surrealist atmosphere. In his portraits, Jahan uses the hand to its full expressive potential, emphasizing its gestures with a high degree of sensibility.
But perhaps, more personally, for Jahan the hand is a memory of the photographic gesture itself...

Two important works by Pierre Jahan featuring hands were showcased in the seminal 2004 exhibition of the Bühl Collection at the Guggenheim Museum in New-York and Bilbao, titled "Speaking with Hands" : La Main aux Yeaux (1948), which featured on the cover of the retrospective of the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Saint Denis, in France in 2014, as well as the 1945 photograph of the Studio fire.