The History of Hand Shadows

[Music] do you know when the first person made the first and Shadow no neither do I in fact nobody does because before the 17th century there is very little evidence to tell us the story of hand Shadows hello everyone my name is Drew Colby and I'm an international hand Shadow artist in this video I will be exploring the history of hand Shadows now we don't have a lot of evidence of hand Shadows before the 17th century a big reason for this is that hand Shadows are an Emeral art form the Puppeteer makes the shape with their hands but the shadow is the puppet the act of the audience are watching the visual thing that gives meaning and context what happens when the light goes off and the shadow is no more it ceases to exist and remains only in the imagination of the audience if you make a puppet out of wood and fabric it can last for [Music] centuries a leather shadow puppet carefully preserved can survive longer than the person who made it or the Puppeteer who removed [Music] it but the hand Shadows have no such artifacts and before the era of photographs and video there was no way of capturing the transient magic of hand Shadows of course people could write about the shadows and draw and paint images but the art of hand Shadows is not just about making the recognizable shape of an animal creature or person with your hands in front of a light casting a shadow it is also the art of bringing that shape to life and giving it some meaning story or character through Movement we know that human beings have been fascinated by the idea of bringing their artworks to life or animating them for many thousands of years now of course we have Cinema and cartoons digital and stop frame animation but in the past tens of thousands of years ago people did not have these media to play with we look to Paleolithic art which dates back tens of thousands of years for our first evidence this artwork made by the hands of people in a cave in Argentina around 7,300 BC shows a fascination with the beautiful shape of the human hand the artwork was created by placing the hand on the rock surface and blowing paint over the hand to create a silhouette in this cave art of a bison note how the animal has a number of legs more than the usual four there is a theory that by the moving light of a fire or flaming torch the Bison would appear to be running or walking as the light alternately illuminated different legs it seems to be an attempt by the artists to depict how the legs of the Bison move the number of legs and their positions show different positions of the bison's legs as it walks or runs there is also some evidence to suggest that people were fascinated by the way light catching a threedimensional object would transform that object into something different in the two-dimensional Shadow plane a good example of this is this stalagmite which seems to have been carved by someone to create a shadow image on the wall of the cave it is suggested that this is a bison human with the Bison horn and JS at the top and the human body below this is the the very essence of hand Shadow making where the light is catching the three-dimensional hands and transforming the shape being made by the Puppeteer to something different in the two-dimensional Shadow play here I am making a nondescript Shadow but as my hands move around the light catches the shape of a [Music] bear then the is gone again it's tempting to think that the hand Shadows began tens of thousands of years ago in those caves by the flickering light of a fire but Fire Light doesn't make good hand Shadows because much of the detail of the Shadow would be lost in the constantly moving diffuse light the shadow would be blurry with a wooly Edge the fire burning out most of the details it might be very Lively but you wouldn't really see what it was meant to be [Music] [Music] [Music] it was only when the single Source light came into being candles small oil lamps that the small flame could make a sharp shadow that could then be clearly seen it has been suggested that early people used marrow fat lamps which would most likely have been a good source of light for hand [Music] Shadows the earliest illustrations we have of people making hand Shadows come from Japan in the 17th century in this print by moronobu hishikawa who lived from 1618 to 1694 we see a lady making a small Shadow Man on a screen the shadow man is made with her hands but also utilizing some small props there is a hat fan and two shoes she uses a lamp on a stand as the shadow light and on the other side of the lamp the audience member is reclining the position of his hand suggests he might like to try to make a hand Shadow too the performance is being accompanied by some music being played by a second lady on a shamin this print is fascinating because it shows us every element of the performance not only the Shadow and how it is made but also the light source the instrument used to accompany the show and perhaps most importantly the audience member watching the performance [Music] just over a century later we have this charming wood block print or suono this was created around 1807 by ruri Yoko shinai the image depicts a woman creating a rabbit Shadow for a small boy this time the performer is projecting the shadow through a screen and the audience member is on the other side of the the screen it seems that the light source this time might be the Sun as suggested by the orange semicircle peeping over the clouds in the top left side of the image Perhaps it is evening and a mother is telling her child a bedtime story note how she makes the rabbit shadow [Music] the next images are two colorful wood block prints by the Japanese artist utagawa hiroshige who lived from 1797 to 1858 they show not only the Shadows but also how to make the Shadows perhaps the first how to do it of hand Shadows noticeably here we see the same rabbit as in the previous image we also notice the artist suggest the use of simple household items as props to enhance the Shadows Chopsticks are used for the snail's eye stalks or tentacles a piece of cloth is used to Pat out the body of this animal let me know in the comments below what you think this animal is a really important part of the art of hand Shadows is what the audience sees when watching the show the audience's imaginative investment in the magic [Music] [Music] now we turn our attention to Europe France this is an image of an Entertainer called Felician try born in 1848 try had many skills one of which was the art of shador graphy or hand Shadows this image shows as try performing behind a screen he is a good distance from the light and quite far from the screen on the other side of the screen will be a large theater with a big audience he is making the wolf [Music] [Applause] Shadow note his large fabric Cape much like the suggestion on hiroshige Prince to use fabric to Pat out the animal's body the Cape May have been used to add to the body of try's elephant and Cat Shadows note also the light at this time performers used Limelight to make shadows hence the expression being in the Limelight this consisted of two jets of gas hydrogen and oxygen which are burned together to create an extremely hot flame when this heated a piece of calcium oxide also known as quick lime an intense white light was created limel this was probably quite a dangerous light source and required someone to regulate the light and monitor it at all times it also seems the performer could not make his shadow too close to the light as it was presumably too hot and the shadow may have become blurry closer to the light interesting to note the presence of a fireman backstage in the theater standard practice in many theaters but especially necessary in an era where theaters were lit by [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] gas by the turn of the 20th century books on how to make hand Shadows were being published usually with handrawn illustrations onepage Shadow manuals were also popular [Music] [Music] now in the early 20th century across Europe and in the USA hand Shadows were largely being performed by magicians often as part of a larger act with the rise of Cinema many filmmakers saw the potential to use shadows as an expedient way of Storytelling in the old dark house 1932 directed by James whale actress Gloria Stewart who you may know as the old lady in Titanic amuses herself by making simple hand Shadows suddenly something frightening happens but you'll have to watch the film to see what it is Norman Rockwell who lived from 1894 to 1978 created this artwork intitled the hand Shadow artist which much like the earlier Japanese prints we looked at shows not only the shadow in how it is made but also the light source in this case a paraffin lamp perhaps and the audience notice that the man just like Felician truie is making a wolf but in quite a different way can you see the difference there is something so human about the hand Shadows the simple use of the human anatomy to create something beautiful to express emotion to make the audience laugh the true magic of hand Shadows lies in the way it communicates from one human the performer or performers to many humans the audience it is a wonderful shared experience in real time and so we come to our Century the 21st century where many people might say well hand Shadows is a dying art form it's old fashioned the very opposite is true with the advances of Technology the advances of digital and video recording hand Shadows reaching an even wider audience than ever before and the advances of technology for example lighting LED lighting give performers greater possibilities in this world of digital possibility CGI animation there's something about the purity of hand shadows and the skill of the performers which still captivates people as it may have done tens of thousands of years ago and this is no surprise we are after all just people and every one of us has a of Shadow for in and out above about below it is nothing but a magic Shadow show played in a box whose candle is the sun around which we Phantom figures come and go [Music]