To Touch Is To Tell
(Context)
To Touch Is Tell is a self-initiated editorial research project exploring how everyday hand gestures hold emotional meaning through repetition, memory, and collective interpretation.
(Deliverables)
Card-based editorial book
Staged photography series
Public quantitative research
Data visualisation
Publication design
Fingerprints are part of the experience :)
Each card documents a single everyday hand gesture, pairing staged photography with collective responses around repetition and emotional ‘aftertaste’, revealing how meaning is built through both action and interpretation.
The ring-bound, card-based format allows the work to function as an archive rather than a linear book, encouraging viewers to compare gestures, notice patterns, and form their own associations.
By presenting over 50 gestures together, the project shifts focus from individual moments to accumulated behaviour, highlighting how small, repeated actions quietly shape emotional memory.
The repetition and aftertaste sequences are informed by public quantitative research, translating collective responses around frequency and imagined sensation into visual rhythms that reflect how these gestures are commonly experienced.
Together, these moving elements shift the project from documentation into reflection, inviting viewers to recognise similar motions in their own bodies and everyday routines.