Notes on No. 07On holding hands: two men in suitsDear reader,There is a particular kind of man who will shake your hand firmly and look you in the eye, and who has never once held another man’s hand in public. The suit is part of it. Tailoring was invented to make a body legible as power: shoulders squared, waist disciplined, every gesture accounted for.Which is why the hands matter. In No. 07 the suits are doing everything they were designed to do. The fabric is sharp, the cuffs are correct. And at the very bottom of the frame, where the composure ends, two hands have found each other.We sign our letters mit freundlichen Grüßen, with kind regards, a phrase so formal it has stopped meaning anything. It is what we write when we are being proper. The hands are what happens after the signature. They are the message the pigeon was really sent to carry.Nothing in the image is hidden. Nothing in it is explained. It simply asks how long two men in suits would have to stand like this before nobody looked twice.With love, from the messenger,Boté
