You Can Learn A Lot From Photos Of SubwayHands

Hannah La Follette Ryan is the person behind the Instagram account @subwayhands. She has been fascinated by hands for a while now. Hannah takes photos of people’s hands on the New York subway. Most of the time she just sneakily snaps them on her phone while commuting. People rarely even notice that they’re the subject of her photography. No one expects to have pictures of their hands taken and since Hannah doesn’t use a big camera and doesn’t try to take portraits — her subjects remain anonymous and unaware.

However, as she said, hands can reveal much more than the face. We all subconsciously clench out hands, make gestures, the tension after a stressful day is sometimes way more visible in the hands that it is in the face when you’re in public. We don’t think to hide our hands, we only think to hide the emotions on our face. So hands can be incredibly revealing.