The Harvard Advocate

Hannah La Follette Ryan is the New York based photographer behind @subwayhands, a viral Instagram account which showcases portraits of strangers’ hands on the subway and boasts over 250 thousand followers. Poetry board member Ezra Lebovitz and design board member Anna Correll spoke with her via email this January about her work, her method, and the rules of subway decorum. AC: What led you to start looking at people’s hands? HLFR: Chronic people watching. Hands can reveal as much about a person as a face. Hands mediate our relationship with the world and each other. Our gestures and mannerisms capture our moods and illustrate our inner life. EL: If you could change one thing about the subway, what would it be? HLFR: I would nationalize public transportation and make it free. AC: What’s something that’s been bothering you lately? HLFR: Governor Cuomo. AC: When do you feel most comfortable? HLFR: Drinking tea in my studio when it’s raining. EL: What is it like using an iPhone for these photos, as opposed to a traditional camera? HLFR: By shooting on an iPhone I’m able to be mostly invisible to my subjects, ideal conditions for “street photography.” I blend in with the masses texting and scrolling. You have to get stealthy shooting in an intimate and enclosed space like the subway. Walker Evans photographed subway passengers with a camera hidden under his coat and the shutter release cable up his sleeve. Helen Levitt rode the trains with a right angle viewfinder so she could sneak photos without being noticed. My project captures the expressivity and naturalism of hands- in order to do that I have to be a fly on the wall. AC: How do you negotiate other people’s personal boundaries when taking pictures? Is it any less invasive to take pictures of a person’s hands than of their face? HLFR: Photographing hands is less confrontational than photographing faces. I find it doesn’t distress people sensitive to their photo being taken in the same way. It starts a…