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This book contains more than 400 pictures of Gunnar Smoliansky´s hands, each a spontaneous composition crafted by the photographer in his traditional darkroom. The inspiration for this series was unexpected and Smoliansky pursued it with an artist´s rigor, creating a complex series, each image a nuanced variation on a theme. Some pictures are deceptively simple, hardly recognizable abstractions; others are realistic, revealing even the texture of Smoliansky´s palm; while others still are almost violent inky overlappings. By bypassing the tool of the camera and reinterpreting the photogram, Smoliansky revisits one of the earliest means of photographic picture making and creates a gestural space between photography and drawing.

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Smoliansky, Gunnar
Born in 1933 in Visby on the island of Gotland, Gunnar Smoliansky is a major Swedish photographer. He has devoted himself to the medium since the 1950s, originally working as a photographer´s assistant and attending courses under Christer Strömholm. Between 1956 and 1963 he worked as an industrial photographer and since the 1970s has practiced as an independent artist. Smoliansky works exclusively in black and white and develops his photographs by hand in the darkroom. Stockholm has been the focus of Smoliansky´s photographic world, particularly the areas of Södermalm and Saltsjö-Boo where he has lived and worked for most of his life. Steidl published Smolianky´s One Picture at a Time in 2009.

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