Self Portrait, Fingers
Self Portrait, Fingers, 1999
by John Coplans (1920 â 2003)
An extract from Coplanâs obituary in August 2003 remarks, âBoth poignant and aggressive⦠images included close-ups of his hands and feet, legs and torso, exposing expanses of sagging and wrinkled flesh, as well as startling details like flaking skin, split nails, flattened arches and anarchic hair. They combined elements of documentary photography and performance art, scrutinizing the body unforgivinglyâ.
Coplans made a whole sequence of images based on his hand. Magnified to a dramatic scale and isolated from the rest of the body, the hand seems to have assumed an identity of its own.
This photograph can be read almost like a person in miniature with the fingers as legs, possessing their own energy and sense of arrested life. He recognised the ambiguity of such images commenting,
âThe hand hereby becomes a text capable of many and complex interpretations, an agent of evocation and a malleable instrument of performance with an ever-expanding level of impossible meaningsâ.
(John Coplans, artistâs handbook, âHandâ, 1988)
Black and white photograph
Purchased through the Contemporary Art Society Special Collection Scheme with Lottery funding from the Arts Council England, 2001
