COMPONENT 2
06. Hair
Images of hair have held a cultural and fashion interest for photographers. Marc Laroche often photographs the movement and structure of hair. Fabien Baron and Alex Styles have explored unusual hair styles in their fashion photography. In her project ‘East Flatbush, Brooklyn’, Sabrina Santiago documents hair salons and the part they play in the African Caribbean community. J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere documented the intricacy of patterns and textures in hundreds of Nigerian hairstyles.
Study appropriate sources and produce your own work inspired by Hair.
Study appropriate sources and produce your own work inspired by Hair.
My initial thoughtsI have selected the topic of hair for my Component 2 Externally Set Assignment. I was challenged by my photography class to attempt this topic because they suspected that I would not be interested in it. However, I am actually fascinated by hair and hairstyles so the joke's on them!
Joking aside, I am going to find this topic a real challenge and that is interesting. It will take me out of my normal way of working and force me to consider something that is not usually of immediate interest. The language used on the Component 2 paper is interesting:
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Botticelli uses long flowing hair to suggest extreme feminine beauty. The curve of the flowing hair mirrors the sinuous (unrealistic) lines of Venus' body, the gently rippling waves and the billowing fabric of the clothes and drapery. Everything in this painting seems to be quivering with life. Venus is the goddess of love who has just been 'born', so she should be seen as the most beautiful woman on Earth. Some modern and contemporary artists, however, have viewed hair quite differently. Fur is animal hair and Meret Oppenheim uses this to cover a normal cup, saucer and spoon. This makes the object seem repulsive to us. We imagine trying to take a sip from the cup and anticipate gagging in the process. There might also be a slightly rude or erotic element to this idea of a fur cup! Sheela Gowda uses human hair in her installation at Tate Modern. Car bumpers are suspended from the ceiling with long skeins of hair, almost like ropes. The soft hair is contrasted with the hard metal of the bumpers.
In Karnataka, where Gowda lives, the hair and car bumpers used in Behold are everyday materials with ritual significance. Short strands of human hair are commonly knotted around the bumpers of vehicles to ward off accidents and bad luck.
-- Tate website
Some initial questions:
- Why do (some) people care so much about their hair?
- Why is hair so important culturally?
- Why is hair such big business?
- What is it like to work with hair in a hairdressers or barbers?
- What does hair look like when photographed in different lighting conditions?
- What's the best way of capturing the movement of hair?
- How do students feel about their hair?
Instagram Hair
As part of my initial research I decided to sift through my Instagram feed to see which images seemed to have something interestingly hair related. I only searched through a couple of days, taking screen shots as I scrolled. I was surprised by how many pictures related to the idea of hair. The variety of pictures suggests the range of associations we have with hair and its importance in our lives. To be honest, I've never really been that interested in hair as a subject for photography but I'm beginning to understand that it has lots of potential.
Marc Laroche research
Marc Laroche is a commercial fashion photographer. The following portfolio of images is entitled 'Hair' and is displayed on his website.
What interests me about these particular pictures is the way the model's hair sometimes obscures her face. The beauty of the model's face is replaced, in a sense, by the beauty of her hair. Laroche appears to have taken these pictures in a studio with a dark backdrop and artificial, low key lighting. In order to freeze the movement of the hair, he must have used a relatively fast shutter speed and the burst mode on his camera (or taken hundreds of pictures!). This makes the hair seem almost sculptural. However, it is possible to see some blurring of the hair in places. These images are in black and white. I think this is to enhance the sense of abstraction and so that we are not distracted by the colour of the hair but rather admire the range of tones in the image. This approach to photography reminds us that the camera can 'see' things that are invisible to the naked human eye.
Hair also seems to be an important feature in other pictures by Laroche where it used for expressive effect. Again, the photographer has used low key lighting to create a dreamy, slightly sombre or intense atmosphere. Again, the faces of the models are partly obscured by their long hair. Sometimes he uses colour but it is the only the hair that seems to be important for its colour. He also uses unusual framing and shallow depth of field to add an air of mystery to the images. To be honest, I'm not that interested in work like this because it relies on notions of conventional beauty. However, I am interested in the technical challenges implied by using a combination of fast shutter speeds, dramatic lighting and the burst mode on my camera. I also like the way that the photographer is showing us something with the camera that we can't normally see with our eyes, because of the very fast shutter speeds.
Ideas:
- Take a series of studio portraits in black and white experimenting with capturing the movement of hair using a variety of shutter speeds and the burst mode on my camera. Compare the results to see how much motion blur is acceptable.
- Take a series of photographs of long/curly hair from behind so that we don't see the model's face. Concentrate on the pattern and texture of the hair. Shoot in colour and convert to black and white. Compare and contrast.
Response to Marc Laroche
This was my first attempt at shooting moving hair like Marc Laroche. I used the burst mode on my camera and a shutter speed of 125th of a second. I chose a wide aperture of f/2.8 and high ISO of 3200 because of the low light. I edited the images in Lightroom, converting to black and white and flattening out the tones. I added some clarity to further define the texture of the hair. I'm relatively pleased with the results but I don't think I will pursue this technique any further.
I then decided to photograph the backs of people's heads, partly influenced by the hair portraits of J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere:
I used the same black background and one softbox as the previous shoot. I used a wide aperture because I wanted a shallow depth of field. I was hoping that the softbox would highlight the texture of each person's hair but that large areas of each image would be relatively dark and mysterious. These are unconventional portraits because we can't easily identify the sitters. This is a much more successful outcome than the moving hair experiment and it's something I may return to later on in my investigation.
I have made a second attempt at a set of class 'hair' portraits with Year 9 students:
I like the abstract quality of the black and white pictures and the hijab which covers the hair but still reveals its shape underneath. It seems less easy to distinguish boys and girls' hair in this sequence. It might be interesting to create a grid of many more 'hair portraits' so that the individual portraits are quite small and the viewer is forced to consider the overall pattern of the composition.
Hair Places
Whilst on a trip to Cambridge I noticed a number of high street barbershops and hairdressers and decided to take pictures of their facades from the opposite side of the street. I was interested in their names, the images displayed in their windows, the people passing in front of the premises and occasional signs of work going on inside. I don't really know if I will continue to photograph shops like this but I am interested in the places where hair is cut. I like the idea of creating a typology of some sort - a bit like the posters of different hair styles used to advertise the skills of some barbers. I'd like to photograph hairdressers' premises in different places, perhaps a bit more diverse than Cambridge.
Here are some more pictures of Hair Places taken in Peckham and Lewisham. I think these are more successful and definitely reflect a more diverse community. Getting your hair cut is one of those activities, like shopping, that is common to all communities. I'm fascinated by the similarities and differences between the places where hair cutting takes place. I particularly like the photos taken at dusk in this set.
Idea:
I've been thinking about Zoe Leonard's project 'Analogue' from the 1990s. It is comprised of over 400 photographs taken on an old twin lens camera using colour film. The pictures are store fronts in Manhattan and other parts of the world, connected by the produce they sell. It's a project about globalisation and the demise of the small, family-run stores of New York. I was lucky enough to see it installed at The Museum of Modern Art in 2015. Here are some pitcures from that show, showing how the artist chose to arrange her images in grids on the wall:
If I manage to gather a decent number of pictures of Hair Places, I might experiment with various ways of displaying them like this. Maybe they could be grouped according to the places where they were taken, or the time of day. I could separate barbers from hairdressers or group them by the colour of the facade. I'm certainly going to keep taking pictures of Hair Places over the next few weeks.
Poems about hair
I like the idea of taking inspiration from literature for this project. Poetry is a bit like photography in that the writer attempts to capture the essence of something using a kind of compressed and intense language. Poems are also often shaped like photographs, having a border around them on the printed page. I managed to find a couple of poems in which hair is one of the subjects:
SEX, POLITICS AND RELIGION by Lavinia Greenlaw
Her features unfold as she lowers her head back against the basin. I play for time, getting the temperature of the water just right I have almost grown used to touching old hair and have learnt to respect a customer’s face, clamping my free hand against the forehead and forcing the spray tight against the scalp. I must keep my eyes on my fingers and must not stare at her feathery cheeks or the rolling chin that falls away to reveal her puckered throat and the seamless hole through which she now had to breath. If I understood the words burped into shape by her new oesophagal voice, I might ask about cancer and what would happen if my hand slipped and the harsh foam dribbled comfortably down a network of gullies or if a fly...I have to get a look. The opening is neat and dark, framed by the skin of an unbearable softness. She has shut her eyes and is smiling as I massage hard and keep my mind on the three things I was told by my mother that a hairdresser should never discuss. |
Mark Doty's poem THIS IS YOUR HOME NOW, set is a barber shop, is much longer. I really like the opening verses which feature photographs:
For years I went to the Peruvian barbers on 18th Street - comforting, welcome; the full coatrack, three chairs held by the barbers, eldest by the window, the middle one a light fellow who spoke an oddly feminine Spanish the youngest last, red-haired, self-consciously masculine, and in each of the mirrors their children's photos, mildly smutty cartoons, postcards from Machu Pichu. I was happy in any chair, though I liked best the touch of the oldest, who'd rest his hand against my neck in a thoughtless, confident way. Ten years maybe [...] There are several things I like about both these poems. Both capture the physical sensations of having your hair cut. They describe temperature, texture and smell. Photographs can suggest sensory information, texture in particular, but it's harder for a photograph to describe the ways things feel and the relationship between experience and emotion. Poems, like photographs, are often interested in memories. It would be interesting to try to combine words and photographs in this project. Photographs have often relied on words to make their meanings more precise. It would be fun to combine very abstract photographs with very precise text, for example. This is something I think I'll return to later in my investigations.
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Hair Place Poem
I really like the names of Hair Places and the words used to describe the various kinds of hair cut or treatment available in them. I also really like the typography used for the shop signs. I recently saw a book called Destroying the Laboratory for the Sake of the Experiment by photographer Mark Power and poet Daniel Cockrill. I really liked the way that the poems were printed in the style of the typography from the photographs. Here are some examples:
This gave me the idea to try to make a poem using the signs and messages displayed on the Hair Places by cutting them out of the photographs using Photoshop. Some of the signage was already like a poem:
I selected particular words from the shop front signage and saved them as separate files. I applied a Threshold Adjustment in Photoshop and, in most cases, inverted each image. I then created a new A4 document and began to place each word on the page to make a kind of poem. I then experimented with various ways to distress the text before saving it as an image.
Fabian Baron and Alex Styles research
Fabian Baron is an art director, photographer, film maker and designer who believes in the directness of imagery. Having trained with analogue tools, he respects the craft of design work but he also appreciates the immediacy that digital software provides. He has experimented with unusual hairstyles in much of his fashion photography. In this video he talks about the importance of geometry and architecture in the design work of his youthful apprenticeship and it strikes me that these are important features of his mature practice. Hair can be sculpted into unusual shapes and can become almost an artwork of its own. Baron's work is often quite dark, sophisticated and surreal. He seems very interested in texture and line. Here are some examples of his photographs:
By contrast, Alex Styles' hair photographs seem more playful and light-hearted, perhaps less influenced by fine art or design. They seem more exuberant, less restrained. Perhaps this has something to do with the expressions on the models' faces and the use of shocking colour contrasts. Fabian Baron's photographs are much more desaturated and the models are mostly impassive.
Ideas:
I'm really not interested in this kind of photography because it seems to be more about selling a product or lifestyle than about the qualities of the image itself. I do like the more adventurous Fabian Baron images, especially those in which the hair takes on a sculptural quality. Since I'm no hairdresser, nor do I know anyone who is, I wonder whether I can create a similar effect by substituting hair for other materials - tree branches, for example.
Dora Maar at Tate Modern
On Friday 17 January we visited Tate Modern to see the Dora Maar exhibition and explore some of the other works of art on display. Dora Maar's work is undergoing critical re-evaluation and she is now recognised as a significant 20th century photographer. Her work is varied, including commercial advertising and fashion images, portraits, surrealist photocollages, documentary street photographs and cameraless abstract experiments.
As well as photographing work in the show, using a variety of strategies, we also made drawings and wrote poems. I was particularly interested in the early commercial work, especially images featuring hair. Maar seemed fascinated by the sculptural qualities of hair, its texture and weight. She exploited pictures of hair in imaginative photomontages in which hair becomes liquid. I also really enjoyed the shampoo portrait in which the woman's head and hair have been rotated 90 degrees so that it appears to be defying gravity! |
Here are some of the photographs I made in the exhibition. I used pictures by Dora Maar with holes cut in them through which I photographed to isolate parts of other images. I also zoomed into some pictures, focusing on details that interested me. Photographing Maar's pictures helped me look harder at them. I've also used the Layout app to combine some of my pictures.
I made a couple of drawings of particular photographs. The first one was made with carbon paper on white card. The idea was to look hard at the image and trace the journey of my eyes across its surface. I couldn't see what I was drawing until afterwards. The second drawing was made with a white pencil on black card. I tried to draw the light in the photograph, not worrying about lines or areas of shadow.
I decided I would try to make a poem from one of the wall texts in the exhibition. I chose my favourite words and phrases in order, leaving out those that didn't appeal. This is what I ended up with:
THE EVERYDAY poets
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Hair Portraits
I had experimented with this idea before and decided to have another go. I took pictures of the backs of several heads like before but, this time, I decided I would try to combine them. I used an app called Image Blender on my phone to create a composite portrait of all the heads. Here are the individual portraits, the sequence of combined heads and the final outcome.
The Boy With Green Hair
One of my strongest memories from childhood is watching a film about a boy whose hair turns green. I would have watched the film on TV, a black and white TV probably, rather than at the cinema so I wouldn't have actually seen his green hair - it would have been grey! However, the film obviously had a real impact on me because I can remember the scene where he first stairs disbelievingly at his new hair in the mirror and the sense of isolation and rejection he felt for much of the film because of his green hair. I also remember that at one point he has his head shaved. Nowadays it's not unusual for young people to dye their hair all sorts of vivid colours. Hair dyeing is a kind of rebellious gesture or, perhaps, a fashionable trend. In the 1950s the boy's green hair would have been very unusual. It marked him out as different. Peter, the boy in the film, is a war orphan. The message of the film is complex. Peter must learn to accept himself (and his green hair) as something special and that he has a mission to tell all the people of the world (who will notice him because of his green hair) that war is very bad for young people. The film is a plea for peace after the horrors of the second world war and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Everywhere you go people will say, "There goes the boy with the green hair." And then people will ask, "Why does he have green hair?" So you will tell them, 'Because I am a war orphan and my green hair is to remind you that war is very bad for children."
Idea:The extract from the film above includes a wonderful tableau of war orphaned children, dressed like adults, who tell Peter that his hair is beautiful because it symbolises Spring and Hope for the future. I am interested in photographing a person with green hair. I could document a day in the life of this person, following them as they go about their normal activities (inspired by Sophie Calle). I could also experiment with staging scenes using multiple actors in the style of Jeff Wall. I haven't really photographed like this before so I imagine it will be a real challenge.
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Jeff Wall's 'Tattoos and Shadows' re-stages one of the photographer's memories using actors. It also references Manet's famous painting 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' (The Luncheon on the Grass) from 1863.
I decided to create my own photographic tableau, referencing Manet's painting, Jeff Wall's photograph and one of the scenes in the forest from The Boy with Green Hair. I found a garden setting and a small group of 'actors', one of whom had green hair.
I decided to edit my favourite images, adding some warmth and toning down the highlights, so that they looked more like the old film stock used in The Boy with Green Hair. Here are my favourite outcomes:
Another idea relates to the work of Sabrina Santiago. In her series 'On Hair', she takes portraits of people with interesting hair styles and asks them to make a statement about it. Here's an example of one woman called Elle who happens to have green hair:
My hair has always served as a way for me to express my identity and make a statement. I was raised with the idea that as a woman, my hair symbolizes power. I’m trying to have fun with the idea and the many ways my hair can exude that energy.” I like the idea of photographing someone with green hair but also including extracts of text next to each photograph. Sophie Calle tells a story about following a stranger is Suite Vénitienne. I'm interested in the ways that pictures and text can work together to create meaning. The text could either support or contradict the apparent or superficial 'meaning' on the photograph.
In this example by Santiago, Elle's statement about "identity" and "power" reflects the way the photographer has chosen to represent her. She offers a challenging look back to the camera, slightly aggressive. Her tattoo and huge hooped ear ring, plus the urban setting, chain link fence and overpainted wall also suggest someone who is comfortable living an independent life in the city. I like the way that the colour green is used throughout the composition - green eye liner, the green garden beyond the fence and the patch of green paint on the wall. What looks like a casual, snapshot style photograph has obviously been carefully structured to convey a particular message. |
But what would happen if the text told a different story? Maybe I could also experiment with moving image portraits and include not only words but sound as added context.
Street Hair Portraits
I decided to combine several ideas in this shoot:
- hair portraits
- portraits of people with dyed hair
- Sophie Calle's practice of following strangers
Three of these portraits combine dyed hair (yellow/orange) with animal print fabric (leopard/tiger). Here is what they look like together as a triptych:
I noticed that photographer Hans Eijkelboom has a new exhibition of his street portrait typologies at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol. It includes the following set of photographs of women with dyed hair. I suspect Eikelboom uses a long lens so that he can photograph people on the street without them really knowing. I might try this approach too if I can get hold of a telephoto lens. What interests me about this kind of typological approach to photography is that it enables the viewer to make comparisons and view a set of pictures of similar subjects, taken over a long period of time, in order to observe cultural trends. Another famous example of this, related to architecture, are the typologies of Bernd and Hilla Becher. This is another example of the way in which photography can show us something that is not possible with normal vision.
Laurence Aëgerter research
I've just discovered this series of photographs by Laurence Aëgerter of the backs of visitors to Le Louvre in Paris. Here's the description of the project from the artist's website:
Life-size staged photographs of people standing in front of iconic paintings in the Louvre Museum, Paris.
Aëgerter’s Louvre photographs deal with a normal situation which is re-enacted outside the opening hours. The photographs have not been Photoshopped or manipulated in any way. The encounters are potential realities resulting from observations and earlier experiences with the Catalogue des Chefs-d’oeuvre du Musée du Louvre. The observers of Aëgerter’s photographs might identify with the spectators. What are we looking at?
I really like the idea that there a multiple levels of subject in these photographs. Do we first notice the painting being looked at by the visitor to the museum or the visitor themselves? Each visitor is identified as different by their hair and clothes. Each of the paintings contains particular types of hair - long hair under bathing caps, hair piled on top of the head like an elaborate sculpture, cat's hair, hair under a turban etc. In each of the paintings being viewed, someone or thing is also doing some looking - a naked bather and a dead stingray appear to look back at us, whereas card players exchange looks and Venice is populated with hundreds of looks. One bather turns her back to us and the visitor, both of them looking away. In these photographs, the hair of the viewer is only one element in a sophisticated composition. It is, however, a noticeable feature of every picture. Our hair covers our heads but also frames our faces and our looking in a similar way to a painting being framed.
The next time I visit an art gallery of museum I intend to make some 'hair portraits' of the visitors, paying close attention to the thing or things that they are looking at.
The next time I visit an art gallery of museum I intend to make some 'hair portraits' of the visitors, paying close attention to the thing or things that they are looking at.
Alan Powdrill's Hair Portraits research
I'm really interested in the way we use our hair to express our personalities and how this particularly relates to young men. Alan Powdrill's portraits often feature young men with unusual or distinctive hair styles. Here are a few examples:
It seems that he is interested in the way that the men's hair frames their faces and sets of their expressions. Most of the subjects look straight back at the camera whereas a couple stare off to one side. They are nearly all shot on location in various parts of the world. One seems to be in a studio setting.
Idea
I'm going to start gathering portraits of people in school - teachers and students - focusing on male subjects whose hair seems to be an important part of their identity. I may ask them to reflect on their relationship with their hair so that I can possibly exhibit these statements as titles or captions.
Editing the portraits in Lightroom
Céline Bodin research
In her project 'The Hunt' artist Céline Bodin creates a kind of encyclopaedia of female hairstyles through time. She seems to be commenting on the relationship between hairstyles, sexuality, social rank and self-image. The women in the photographs are relatively anonymous, almost like statues, and we are presented with a positive and negative version of each photograph. I'm really interested in the negative images particularly. They seem much more abstract so that the hair itself is paler and more prominent. I intend to experiment with this approach, perhaps making negative prints in the darkroom from my existing digital prints.
Experiments
I first experimented with Photoshop to create inverted versions of some of my portraits of the backs of students' heads. The best images are those in which the students' clothes are relatively plain and don't distract attention from their hair. I really like the slightly uncanny effect of seeing these hair styles as negatives and I'm looking forward to experimenting with the creation of black and white paper negative versions in the darkroom.
I then created some paper negative prints in the darkroom (using the positive versions of some of the above images converted to black and white):
I didn't think these worked particularly well. The dark backgrounds and low key lighting in the original photographs didn't provide enough contrast in the negative print. I decided to take some quick photographs on my phone using a light background to create images with greater contrast. The negative prints produced with these images are much more effective (see below):