Title: Manual: The Personalities of Hands

Photographer/s: Bill Westheimer

Contributor/s: foreword by The Amazing Kreskin

Date of publication: October 2010

Place of publication: West Orange, NJ

Dimensions: 9″ h x 12″ w x .625″ d

Edition size: 1000

Type of binding: Hardbound with paper jacket

Number of pages: 96

Type of paper: matte artpaper

Number of pictures: 76

Type of printing: offset 5/c

Printer: Oceanic Graphic Printing

Publisher: Petey Pie Press

Designer: Beverly Joel, Pulp Inc.

Language: English

ISBN: 978-0-9841007-1-2

Category: Monograph

Price: $25.00

Summary: The eyes may be the windows of the soul, but hands reveal our humanity. Hands offer a first impression through a handshake, and touch is one of our most perceptive senses. Children instinctively reach out to touch with their hands, gaining as much pleasure from their fingertips as from their vision. Fingerprints serve as a source of identity, and the look and feel of hands often reveal each person’s lifestyle.

In MANUAL: The Personalities of Hands (Petey Pie Press), Bill Westheimer explores the personal stories of dozens of private and public figures, through images of their hands. From infants to the elderly (from a one year old baby to a 102 year old grandpa), Westheimer captures the lives and loves of people from a wide range of cultures and diverse backgrounds, who use their hands in vastly different activities — from politicians and students, to artists, contractors, and doctors. “I collaborate with my subjects to expose their hands and their personalities. Without the distraction of faces, these images become honest and deeply perceptive portraits,” Westheimer explains in his introduction to MANUAL. ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, former NJ Governor Brendan Byrne, PR giant Richard Rubenstein, and trapeze artist Paul Cannon all show their hands in MANUAL, along with a police officer, a mayor, a retired butcher, a welder and dozens of others.

Each subject is portrayed in three perspectives, beginning with a 19th century wet-plate glass negative, then a camera-less photogram, and finally each subject’s self image is revealed through their own handwriting in a written statement. The book includes 70 portraits. Another 80 are available to view at www.manualproject.com. In addition to the trade book, a limited edition small- scale handmade book with 25 portraits is available, and all the prints are available for exhibition.

MANUAL provides a fascinating exploration for the reader: to look for signs of character and experience in the images, and find connections between the subjects’s hands and their self image in their written statements.

Date and place of birth of photographer/s: 1952 Cincinnati, OH

Website: http://www.billwest.com

Book link: http://www.manualproject.net

Donated by: Bill Westheimer

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