Cut, 2012 - Gerard Hanson ©
‘Cultural Curiosity’
Statement
The Umbrella title for this project ‘Cultural Curiosity’ has wide reaching possibilities. Recent work has focused on personal image, especially female hairstyles and the use of wigs, extensions and hair straightening. The salon or barbershop environment is an amazingly social space, and central to those communities that have migrated and consequently established new communities in many places.
Research was undertaken at Customer Choice Barbers \ Unisex Salon and House of Beauty on Soho road to record and capture the space and it’s customers.
The subsequent work reflects the nature of these spaces where people meet in what could be described as portal to the other. The other being a hypothetical zone where definition is transient. Yet these spaces do expose many signposts of the past, present and perhaps the future of communities here in the UK.