Chen Yiding

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    Left hand, has long been linked to chaos, deviance, and evil. We shake hands with the right, swear oaths with the right, bless, salute, and write with the right. In 19th-century Europe, this was more than superstition—being left-handed was treated as forensic evidence of criminality. Cesare Lombroso, the father of criminal anthropology, famously measured inmates’ handedness in his quest to categorize human wickedness. He concluded that left-handedness was a mark of degeneration—a biological indicator of criminal potential. From this emerged a pseudoscientific genealogy that sought to connect the way we hold a fork to the likelihood of committing murder.

    This project begins with that absurd logic: the elevation of hand preference into a tool of forensic prophecy. Drawing from archival aesthetics, the project stages and distorts the visual language of early criminology. Corpses are catalogued and tagged, poses reconstructed in paper mock-ups, with fake measurements laid over real gestures. Each image references suspect portraits, medical diagrams, and forensic displays—yet none of it is trustworthy. And yet, it is all real—a grotesque kind of real.

    Through staged photography, bodily close-ups, and symbolic reconstructions, Natural Born Left-Handed Killer examines the creation of the killer’s image, the design of avatars, the outline of a crime, and the misreading of intent. It invites viewers to reconsider how society once viewed left-handedness—and how photography played its part in enforcing those narratives.








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