Hands on the Train — One Subject, Endless Variation
Why hands?
I started this project a few months ago, photographing hands on the train. I love street photography — it’s a unique challenge within photography, trying to catch unrepeatable moments, and with the right background and use of light, it can be incredibly creative. And hands is one of the elements that can be interesting photographing. It’s so much life in people hands.
So why did I start with the hand project? I wanted to shoot street photography, but my time was limited. I did, however, take the train every day, to and from work. That’s when the idea came: why not photograph people’s hands — the hands sitting right in front of me? So I started choosing seats where I could see people’s hands, and what they were doing with them.
From limitation to style
What I find difficult about street photography is photographing strangers’ faces. They don’t know I’m taking the picture, because I shoot candid. It’s rare that I ask someone for a portrait — it does happen occasionally, and then I focus purely on taking portraits — but I do this seldom. I’m a bit shy about doing it too often. It’s my weakness, this fear of photographing people’s faces. And it’s gotten worse in recent years, because there’s been such a strong focus on people’s privacy and security worldwide — GDPR, and restrictions on photographing in public places. The law says photographers should ask people for permission, but by then the moment is gone, and the picture you could have made of that particular situation is lost. As a photographic artist, this isn’t good for creative expression. I want to shoot the unexpected not an expected scene.
So when I shoot street photography, I try to capture the back of people, or their hands, feet, hats, and other parts of the body without the face. But that’s very challenging. When I’m sitting on the train with passengers’ hands right in front of me, this becomes a powerful form of street photography. With my iPhone, which is silent, I can photograph what the hands are doing, without the face — or just a small part of it, so the person isn’t recognizable.
Weakness turns to strength
I think my weakness in street photography is the fear of photographing faces, but my strength is photographing things like hands without faces — hands that still tell a story. I think this project has become one of my strengths in photography, my own personal breakthrough. I’ve turned a weakness into a strength by thinking a little outside the box.
Is there another way to photograph people and still tell a story, without capturing their faces?
Several other ways to photograph people can still tell a story without capturing their faces. Backs and silhouettes are perhaps the most classic approach—a person walking away carries as much mood and mystery as one walking toward you. Feet and shoes can be just as expressive, especially at crossings, where the rhythm of many legs in motion says something about a city’s pace. Shadows and reflections strip away identity entirely, leaving only shape and gesture, often with a strong graphic quality. And sometimes it isn’t about a single person at all — a crowd, a queue, people waiting — where the collective gesture tells the story rather than any one face. I’ve found that environmental context works too: a person small within a larger frame, where the surroundings do the storytelling. Each of these is, in its own way, the same solution I found on the train — turning a limitation into a different kind of seeing.
What hands reveal
Every hand on the train tells its own small story, if you look closely enough. An elderly hand gripping the curved handle of a cane or umbrella speaks of years, of balance, of a body that has learned to lean on something solid. A hand holding a folded newspaper, a headline half-visible beneath the thumb, tells you someone is still reading the news the old way, unhurried, present in the moment. And sometimes it’s smaller than that — a ring catching the light, a cable looping absentmindedly between two fingers, nothing more than a quiet gesture, and yet it says someone is here.
This is, in a way, its own genre within photography — sometimes called a “hand reveal”: a close, cropped shot of a hand that draws the eye to a single detail, whether it’s an object, a texture, or a piece of jewelry. That’s exactly the kind of storytelling I’m chasing on the train. The hand becomes the whole picture. No face is needed to know that this is a person mid-thought, mid-journey, mid-life.
The ethical dimension
There’s also something deliberate about this choice, beyond the creative one. Photographing strangers’ faces without asking is a grey area — legally and ethically — especially now, with GDPR and a growing awareness around privacy in public spaces. When I photograph hands instead, that grey area disappears. No one can be identified, no consent is violated, and yet the picture still holds something real: a genuine, unposed moment of human presence.
I think of it as an ethically clean way of doing street photography. I’m not hiding from the challenge of photographing strangers — I’m choosing a way to do it that respects them while still capturing something true. The story is still there. It’s just told through a detail instead of a face.
Portrait vs. candid
I haven’t fully made up my mind about this. There’s something honest about candid photography — you capture people as they actually are, unposed, unaware, doing whatever it is they do when no one’s watching. That’s part of what draws me to street photography in the first place. But I sometimes wonder if I’m hiding behind the hands. Would a direct portrait, with someone’s full consent and full face, tell a richer story? Or would it lose exactly the thing that makes this project work — the anonymity, the universality, the sense that this could be anyone, that it could be you?
I don’t have an answer yet. Maybe it isn’t one or the other. Maybe there’s room for both — the candid hand that catches a private, unguarded moment, and the portrait that asks permission to look someone in the eye. I’d be curious to hear what you think: do the hands say enough on their own, or is there something only a face can tell?
The series today – and what’s next
“Hands on the Train” has become one of several ongoing series I’m building around the same idea: the anonymous person in the city, captured through detail rather than through their face. Alongside the hands, I’ve also been working on Backs — the shapes and postures of people walking away, carrying just as much mood as a face would. And I’ve started Crossings, focused on legs and shoes in motion, the rhythm of people moving through the city at street level.
I’m starting to see these three series less as separate projects and more as parts of the same story. Together, they might grow into a full triptych — hands, backs, feet — three ways of showing a person without ever showing who they are. Each series looks at a different part of the body, but they all circle the same question: how much of someone can you capture, and how much of a story can a detail alone tell?
I don’t know if “Hands on the Train” is finished, or if it’s really just the beginning of something bigger. What I do know is that once I started paying attention to hands, I couldn’t stop noticing them — the way someone grips a pole a little too tightly, the way an old hand rests differently than a young one, the small, unconscious gestures we all make without thinking anyone is watching.
So I’ll leave you with the same question I keep asking myself: when you can’t see a face, what do you notice instead? A ring, a posture, a way of holding a bag? I’d love to know what catches your eye — tell me in the comments.
If you want to read more about my experiences in street photography, you can read these articles: One year with street photography in black and white
