Barbershop

I feel like a little boy in a toy store when I’m sitting in front of a barber shop. I’ve been in many barbershops on many streets around the world and each time I had the same strange feeling of stepping into another dimension. It’s a kind of ritual. "Barbershop" is an ongoing project that started unexpectedly, without a previous plan. I started the “Barbershop” series on whim during my 2006 trip to Cuba. Ever since, wherever I traveled, I diligently followed this subject, asking people and doing research as much as was possible. With time I realized that, the barbershops mean much more than a place where people come to fix or trim their beards. It is a part of the community culture's quintessence; it’s about people life, about the very nature of the human spirit. Over the last 12 years I sought to learn more about the barbershop in terms of historical, social and cultural aspects. As wide it is as a subject, as neglected I discover it to be. The barbershop is a unique place for men to socialize. The barbershop is a masculine place. The barbershop is the man’s home away from home. Barbers have a sense of human solidarity that goes beyond daily matters. A barber does not need too many special effects to set up his tiny universe. In Varanasi, on the bank of the holy Ganges River, a chair and a fabric canopy were everything a barber needed to create his magic place. Just a little further the ash of the deceased is being thrown into the muddy waters. In Katmandu I saw barbers fulfilling their “mission” in the little crossroad markets, between temples and stalls. Nor in Hanoi is not too much place - along the walls at the base of bridges, ad hoc barbershop opens next to the mopeds parked nearby. In Morocco, near the cemetery from the Fez medina, I saw the clients waiting in line in front of an improvised tent. In Portugal, the barber’s shop is where soccer fans gather. In Turkey or Palestine it’s a place where one can have a cup of tea and a relaxed chat with a perfect stranger. In Castellammare di Stabia – a small town on the Neapolitan coast, a nonagenarian that seemed to have come straight out of a classic movie suddenly restored my lust for life on a gloomy day. On a side street in Stockholm I found "Barber & Books" an extraordinary combination of a classic barbershop and bookstore. In Dublin I found "The Waldorf Barbers' a historical barbershop founded in 1929 and inherited from father to son. The “Barbershops” have been keeping me busy since 2006. If at the beginning I was working more hectically, now I do more planning ahead, I try to get in touch with owners beforehand, learn about their history and tradition (in case of family businesses spanning across generations). When I get there I already know how to approach the story and I feel much closer to the subjects. Anywhere the roads have taken me, the barbershop is there like a genuine establishment that is never missing. Whether it is rich or poor, the man has always had the same unquenchable need to be proud and groomed - this is part of human nature itself. Wherever you are, the bell that rings when you enter the barbershop has the same universal effect: you leave your worries at the doorstep and suddenly the wide-smiling man in the white gown becomes the best friend you’ve ever had. And then the ritual begins.