“When I moved to Harlem in 1985, along with my wife Meg and daughter Coco, I began to photograph Harlem’s streets almost every day when I wasn't working. Mostly street portraits and landscapes of the community. I had never lived in an inner-city community, and it was also my way of learning and becoming a part of this community,” photographer Jeffrey Henson Scales tells me via email. “At one point, the owner of House’s Barbershop, Mr. David House, saw me outside taking photographs and asked me if I could photograph his shop because he was in danger of losing his lease.”
That question would lead to Scales photographing the shop for the next 6 years. The resulting body of work was first published in House, by SPQR Editions in 2016. And now those same photographs make up the exhibition Jeffrey Henson Scales: House’s Barbershop at Claire Oliver Gallery on Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard, on view through September 20.
