Hong Kong Barbers: Grooming Evolution

This selection of images of emerging barbers in Hong Kong represents the hopes of young people who wish to start up in the barbershop industry. Men’s Grooming services are one of the few industries that are providing sustainable opportunities to the Hong Kong people. These images are visually reconstructed narratives taken from the book project titled Hong Kong Barbers: Grooming Evolution that illustrate lifestyles and contemporary barbering practices and events. From the book, this work presents an insight into the barbershop's trade of Hong Kong and examines the interior spaces that barbers tend to inhabit, capturing these very personalised habitats and showing something that is very intimate, or even private. Barbershops are becoming popular again in Hong Kong because of the widespread access to the cultural influence of mediascapes in the twenty-first century. The American and British music cultures have influenced many upcoming barbers. These have merged into the traditional cultural aspects of the barbering practice in Hong Kong. The rise in the number of barbershops in Hong Kong and Asia reflects the demand for men’s grooming services.