In American Hands, I am honoring Americans who keep alive the traditional arts and crafts that built our country’s dynamically diverse culture and established the underpinnings of our society. I am creating narrative photographic portraits of people who use their hands in traditional ways, doing things that are, today, typically done by machines (if at all). My focus is on those crafts that produced functional items that were needed by their communities, rather than those that are done primarily for artistic expression. These include individuals such as blacksmiths, weavers, spinners, glass blowers, potters, cobblers, manuscript illuminators, book binders, and so forth.