Ooooooo we just love it when Guy comes back for a stay (and play) …
Projects begin in different ways. This one started with a book he found in Manchester, and a portrait style that got Guy’s attention straight away.
The book was by Nero (@Nerohair), a hairdresser who photographed his clients on a Polaroid Big Shot. What caught Guy’s eye wasn’t elaborate styling or a polished production. He says it was the portraits themselves: simple, direct, a little raw. Faces and hair, with nowhere much to hide.
He says he then went down a rabbit hole. (Who doesn’t love a little rabbit hole?). The camera. The flash. He went deep learning everything he could about the camera and that bold, flash-heavy way of shooting. Honing in on how to shoot an image that doesn’t soften everything around its subject.
Moving between London and Cape Town, as he now does, he brought that curiosity home with an old film camera he had. He tracked down a flash and cobbled together his own version. A bit improvised. A bit obsessive. Ready to see what would happen.
Familiar space. Fresh eyes.
Back in Cape Town, scar was the obvious place to put it to work.
Great faces. Great hair. A space he says “feels like home”. This is something we love about 133 on Bree. That it can feel like a stylist’s home.
There seems to be something about photographing people in a place where you already feel comfortable. You can spend less time figuring out the room and more time looking at who’s in it. At scar, the starting point was already there: people worth photographing, and as usual, Guy gave them hair that deserved a frame of its own.
That’s where Afters at scar began.
The name gives the series room to breathe. After the cut, what catches your eye? The shape of the hair? The face beneath it? How the two work together?
A portrait can hold that moment a little longer.
Let the flash do its thing.
Guy says the attraction was always that bold, flash-heavy way of shooting. It has an immediacy to it, a bluntness that suited the original inspiration.
For a hairdresser looking through a camera, there’s another point of interest, too. Hair is something you build in three dimensions, moving around a person, checking a line, adjusting a shape. A photograph puts it all into one frame. Suddenly, you’re looking at your work differently.
Hope you enjoy this collection. We really do!
