This is a project that has been waiting almost half a century for a public viewing. I began shooting barbershops in NYC in the late 1970s as my thesis project for my BFA in Photography at the School of Visual Arts. About half of what you see here served as my final presentation, but beyond the classroom it has never really been seen by anyone. Even i had never seen many of these images in print as i selected a good number of negatives to scan that i had previously overlooked in my original edit.
My fascination with this subject dates back to my childhood, when my father first brought me to the Italian barbershop in the little shopping center situated behind the Levittown Firehouse where Dad served as a volunteer firefighter for more than 30 years. It was where all the firefighters got their hair cut. While i cannot remember my exact age, i must have been 5 or 6 when it was decided i should graduate from the kitchen stool, home buzz cut to the community of professionally coiffed men.
There is something almost carnivalesque about the interior of these old school shops. From the (sometimes) spinning red, white and blue barber poles that announce the vocation, to the bright lights, chrome and leather chairs, lines of glass bottles filled with colourful tonics, stainless steel scissors and straight-edged razors...oh, and the hypnotic funhouse effect of opposing walls of mirrors that create that dizzying tunnel effect of infinite space, i felt as if i had entered a place of endless visual amusement.
Beyond my own first impressions, my interests grew through the shape and place these establishments took in both cultural function and media presentation. Barbershops have served as a social hub and a place of male bonding since the days of ancient Rome. As an informal meeting venue, men would gather on the regular and discuss local news and politics while waiting for a haircut and a shave. These tended to be considered safe spaces where men could speak their minds (for better or for worse) away from the judgements of their wives and the world. A good barber could be an excellent passive listener, allowing patrons to unwind from the stresses of the work week and open up about topics of family and emotional well-being while experiencing non-toxic forms of physical touch and pampering.
Many of these social aspects of the local barbershop were reinforced in film and television. The best example must be the nearly ubiquitous Andy Griffith Show that featured Floyd's Barbershop in a very large portion of its episodes. In 2002 the film Barbershop began a comedy franchise of movies and a TV show that explored the culture of the African American Barbershop. Though in many other films the barbershop sequences often became scenes of deep tension and even violence as in Highland Drifter, Mississippi Burning, The Godfather and The Irishmen, to name just a few. This darker view was possibly fed by historical instances of many gangland slayings that took place over the years. The assassination of Albert Anastasia in 1957 is probably the most famous of these, but there are numerous other examples of similar killings which have placed this malevolent image into the cultural mindset. And then, of course, the Broadway musical Sweeney Todd opened right in the middle of my work on this project, introducing to me an even more macabre element to this subject.
Beginning in the Middle Ages barbers also served as surgeons and dentists. This also has its darker side as many of the practices they administered, such as blood-letting, leeches, and fire cupping are generally seen today as quackery. Wrapping bloody rags around a white pole to dry after blood-letting is believed to be the origin of the barber pole (the blue stripe was added later in the USA as a patriotic gesture).
Because of some of these more morbid histories, i couldn't help but form some correlation between barbers and morticians. The barbershop prepares its clients for their best presentation in life, while the mortuary prepares theirs for the afterlife. Aspects of all the above ideas surfaced in my approach to this work both visually and contextually.
Shops like these are dinosaurs today, nearly extinct from our current world. Yes, there are still places for men to get their hair cut, but the cultural aspects of the barbershops seem to have fallen by the wayside. This is not quite true for Black owned establishments, many of which remain prosperous to this day despite the decline of old school barbering. This may be due to the unique history and nature of that culture and community served, as well as the specific requirements for the care and grooming of Black hair. I did not have the opportunity or access to Black shops at the time and frankly believe they are a subject deserving of their own study, one i will leave for others to pursue. As for the shops i was shooting back in the late 70s-80s, they soon faded from sight. The 60s and 70s took a big bite out of the business, as longer hair styles came into mode with the advent of the hippie generation and unisex "hair stylists" became a more popular method for grooming. Some of these old shops were huge, like ones in the subway system that featured 25 chairs (no waiting), but were only employing two or three barbers at the time i was shooting due to the lack of business. You can see it in the faces of many of these barbers, just killing time for lack of customers, seemingly consigned to the bleak future that awaited their vanishing profession. It is safe to assume that none of the shops shown in this project are still in existence today. Probably most were gone within the decade.
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