Shanghai-style barbershops were very popular in Hong Kong from 1950s to 1970s, their golden years, Skilled barbering masters emigrated to Hong Kong during the 1940s and 1950s and have served the Hong Kong community for over 70 years. This evolution in men's grooming is a worldwide phenomenon and is just as present in Hong Kong as it is in Europe and Asia. One of the many positive aspects revealed is that barbershops provide services for many sectors of society. This type of community interaction is quite rare in that it brings many different kins of a local and global community together.

 

This exhibition is in part, an ethnographic record of the metrosexual, ubersexual identities, and cultural influences of men's grooming practices, and artistic synergy of traditions old and new, that characterise the new age of Hong Kong barbering today. This project is part documentary and part wonderment about this evolution of repurposing a trade. These photographs combine moments or events to allow the outsider to explore and uncover the mysterious world of barbering and to see residual traces of human endeavours and entrepreneurship in the barbershop life and industry.