Samuel Masters for Art-Sheep
African hair is known to be difficult to handle due to its unique texture, but at the same time it is this texture that allows it to be styled into the most intricate and amazing hairdos. Indeed, African cultures are rich with such trends of elaborate, eye-catching hairstyles, that can sometimes get so complicated that they could be described as almost sculptural.
More than 1,000 of these designs were captured by J.D.Okhai Ojeikere in his series Hairstyles, an extensive documentation of Nigerian hair trends spanning two decades, throughout the 1960s and the 1970s. In his collection of minimal, black-and-white pictures, the Nigeria-based photographer portrayed an interesting variety of complex styles encountered in everyday life situations, in an effort to preserve Nigerian culture. Characteristically, he has stated about his work, “All these hairstyles are ephemeral. I want my photographs to be noteworthy traces of them. I always wanted to record moments of beauty, moments of knowledge. Art is life. Without art, life would be frozen.”
via mymodernmet
