In nineteenth-century Europe, left-handedness was sometimes associated with abnormality and criminality. Cesare Lombroso, for example, recorded physical traits among prisoners, including handedness, as part of his attempt to identify signs of an innate criminal disposition. In this way, a small bodily difference could become evidence of character. Everyday gestures were turned into something to be observed, classified, and corrected.
The project brings together archival photographs, diagrams, crime images, sculptures, instructional material, and staged photographs. Many of these sources come from museum collections and public archives. I crop, isolate, reverse, or reconstruct parts of them, placing them alongside newly made images and objects. Historical images are treated here as material that can be handled and rearranged, rather than as fixed records.
I am interested in the authority that certain images seem to acquire through their appearance. Scientific diagrams, museum displays, and forensic photographs often look precise and objective, even when the ideas behind them are unstable or contested. By borrowing these visual languages and introducing small alterations, the project creates situations in which it becomes difficult to tell where documentation ends and construction begins.
The work takes the form of photographs, found images, objects, and sculptural displays. Frames, supports, tools, and other physical structures become part of how the images are read. Through the figure of the left hand, the project looks at how bodily difference can be made visible, given meaning, and gradually turned into a cultural fact.