Hand. Book

£26.00

Created by: Award winning Photographer Agenda Brown
Note: This Book includes Shipping

The Story: This is a beautiful book, ideal for your coffee table. Discover HAND. through the pages of this book.

HAND. marks the launch of EDITIONS by Agenda Brown. The 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 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).

Hands are also graphic, sculptural, totemic, resulting in almost zoomorphic expressions as the body takes on metaphoric qualities. “With portraits, I’ve always been interested in the shape a person occupies in the space you have given it, and HAND. extends that exploration.” “To see a hand at a scale so much greater than it is in reality, zooming in on something that more normally flashes past you in a split second in a conversation, asks you to examine it for a length of time you would never normally spend on it. There is a deeper looking, and for longer, that reveals so many layers in stillness.”

Created by: Award winning Photographer Agenda Brown
Note: This Book includes Shipping

The Story: This is a beautiful book, ideal for your coffee table. Discover HAND. through the pages of this book.

HAND. marks the launch of EDITIONS by Agenda Brown. The 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 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).

Hands are also graphic, sculptural, totemic, resulting in almost zoomorphic expressions as the body takes on metaphoric qualities. “With portraits, I’ve always been interested in the shape a person occupies in the space you have given it, and HAND. extends that exploration.” “To see a hand at a scale so much greater than it is in reality, zooming in on something that more normally flashes past you in a split second in a conversation, asks you to examine it for a length of time you would never normally spend on it. There is a deeper looking, and for longer, that reveals so many layers in stillness.”

“Agenda Brown, the creative protagonist of VISUAL MARVELRY TM and generator of visual stories, possesses a rare ability to capture his subjects in a discerning manner, whilst evoking empathy for his subjects. He is a natural observer of the commonality and differences in all of us. Agenda has successfully developed a substantial imprint as an original photographic commentator and an authentic observer of active and dynamic cosmopolitan artists, creatives, and social entrepreneurs.” - Brent Richards (Former Dean of Design, Central Saint Martins and Executive, The Design Laboratory)

Agenda sadly passed away unexpectedly in July 2024. But his legacy lives on and we are proud to still have permission from his loving family to continue to represent him and his work. Agenda was an award winning portrait photographer; was the winner of the Canon Portrait Award. As a commercial creative, he had provided photographs for features in publications including The Times and The Economist’s magazine Intelligent Life, and was a regular contributor to The Metro for several years. The Guardian, Amateur Photographer - Time Inc. and Hotel Culture have all run photographer profiles on Agenda in the past, as one of the UKs ‘respected portrait photographers’. He also shot and conceived campaigns for theatre company Sparkle & Dark, taste branding agency Miller Libertine, innovation designer Driven by Charles, jeweller Alice Cicolini, architect Gurmeet Syan, denim activists Blackhorse Lane and chef Pedro Pasinhass.

Posthumous publication of The New Chieftains series: On 28th April 2025 a book to celebrate Agenda’s New Chieftains work was also released by his family to ensure his legacy was seen through to the end on the decade of work he had put into it.

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