Hand plays… 2005–2012. Art project of about 100 X-rays of the hand, This project of Marc Ferrante was carried out with the help of radiologists, surgeons and X-ray technicians, and about forty marionettists, dancers, magicians, shadow-play or puppetry artists… There are 5+1 samples of each radiography; they are displayed in a stainless steel light box (36 x 43 x 9 cm) and in digital print photography (108 x 130 cm).

The first-ever X-ray photograph was of Mrs. Röntgen's hand. It offers an apparent contradiction; the hand clutches, touches, caresses, expresses, whereas radiography is a screen that separates the subject from his own body, allowing the doctor to taking over.  Moreover, X-rays only show a partial image of the self. While it miraculously penetrates the body and reveals its anatomy or constituent parts, it also masks the vibrant complexity of the being. It removes the skin, and everything else that makes up one’s personality, life, or feelings…  It looks as if this intimate mapping – with which we cannot really identify – were there to reassure us when confronted with a reality we cannot apprehend.
With these 5 "Hand Plays" series, I tried to approach radiography from an entirely different angle, to find out whether life can be breathed into these images. So, aside from its medical aspect, I tried to define radiography by confronting it to the imaginary processes it generates, one way or another, through the devices used to make or show radiography, but also through its history or that of the other arts that led to its invention.
So, with the complicity of several "artists of the hand", I adapted some very old sleights of hand directly onto the radiologist’s table. I merged the X-ray imagery with the elements that constitute the opacity of a living being, everything that radiography generally negates – shadow, reflection of light, imprints and fingerprint, or the skin itself, people’s mania or research on the hand’s ability to grasp the void or time. These X-rays are digital but the pictures aren’t. I used traditional special effects, although in that case we can’t talk about radiography or image, but rather about painting, sculpture, sewing, cooking, magic… The aim is to have the theory lie, and find out whether radiography can reveal more about us than what it usually shows…