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After teaching high school art for eight and a half years, Brooke Willow burnt out. For several years, the Portland interdisciplinary artist struggled to find a reason to return to the studio. Then the pandemic hit.
“To keep myself busy, I took this really cool course in biomimicry, and that got me inspired again,” Willow tells WW. “When my grandma passed, I kept returning to the ways she would gesture with her hands—the ways they moved when she spoke. She was a complicated human, but her most authentic self lived within her hands.”
The thought led Willow to launch a community photography project that involved photographing the hands of around 100 people on 35 mm film while they talked. Willow hosted pop-up studios at the Historic Overlook House in North Portland and the Portland Art Museum and captured intimate portraits of the gestures, movements and interactions that often go unnoticed.
Now, Willow has collected the photos in a book, The Hands of Portland: Holding On (Weathering Press, 60 pages, $35). It’s the first publication from Weathering Press, a new publishing company Willow founded with Portland designer JP Painter, who designed the book. Local risograph studio Nun Studios handled the printing.
Many images in Holding On focus on the unconscious activity of people’s hands: fidgeting, holding a blunt, covering a face. Others capture hands in moments of tenderness and connection: a father cradling his newborn’s head, a mother pressing her palm into her daughter’s chest.
For Willow, these gestures offer a way of understanding people beyond the stories they tell about themselves.
“I’m interested in the invisible languages we have with ourselves and with others,” they say.
During her photo sessions, Willow asked their subjects questions and photographed their hands as they moved naturally through conversation, occasionally asking them to hold a particular position. The goal wasn’t to direct a pose so much as to capture something natural.
Most of the participants were strangers who wandered into the pop-up studios or signed up out of curiosity. Willow was struck by how readily people entered an intimate space with someone they’d never met, sharing stories and reflecting on what their hands meant to them.
“I was like, I could get used to this,” Willow says. “What surprised me was how brave people are, moving into these spaces and following their interest and curiosity.”
The book also arrives at a particular moment in Portland’s recent history. After the isolation of the pandemic and a series of social disruptions that have reshaped the city, Willow became interested in the ways people gather, support one another, and build a sense of collective belonging.
“Collectively, we went without touching for a long time,” Willow says. “But also the abuse of touch has made people afraid to trust one another. I want to bring people back to the benefic ways that we touch and hold onto each other.”
GO: The Hands of Portland: Holding On book launch event at Up Up Books, 1452 NE 28th Ave., upupbooks.com . 3–5 pm Sunday, Nov. 1. Free (RSVP recommended).
