Claire Oliver Gallery announces Jeffrey Henson Scales: House’s Barber Shop, a solo exhibition by the acclaimed photographer whose poetic and deeply humanistic images have shaped the visual language of Black life in America for over four decades. The exhibition centers on Scales’ powerful photographic series documenting House’s Barber Shop, a cultural cornerstone on Harlem’s Seventh Avenue that operated for over 55 years. House’s Barber Shop will be on view July 18 - September 20, 2025.
This body of work was published in House (SPQR Editions), the 2016 monograph that reintroduced audiences to Scales’ intimate portraits of a now-vanished space, part sociological archive, part personal memoir. Shot between 1986 and 1992 with a Hasselblad 500C/M, the series captures more than a barbershop; it offers a reflective meditation on Black masculinity, intergenerational rituals, community storytelling, and Harlem's shifting cultural landscape at the height of the crack epidemic.
“One day, while passing by, I was invited into the shop to photograph it by its proprietor, David House. At the time he thought he might be losing his lease, and just wanted the shop to be documented. His invitation at the time was like a welcoming into the community that my family had so recently moved. It is something I will never forget, nor diminish its significance. This was the beginning of a five-year journey within the walls of this narrow place imbued with so much history” - Jeffrey Henson Scales
Through fluorescent light and mirrored interiors, Scales renders the shop’s tactile intimacy: the buzz of clippers, the glint of straight razors, the quiet elegance of a space where time seemed to fold into ritual. The exhibition offers viewers a rare opportunity to step back into 1980s Harlem and reflect on the political and poetic legacy of one of its vital communal spaces. Now, with gentrification threatening Harlem’s cultural bedrock, House’s Barber Shop stands as a document of
