The New York photographer's latest solo show is a time capsule of a cultural landmark where Black community thrived
House’s Barber Shop is gone now, but its spirit lives on in Jeffrey Henson Scales’ photographs. Currently on show at Claire Oliver Gallery in New York, the photographer’s latest solo exhibition, Jeffrey Henson Scales: House’s Barber Shop, is a love letter to a community space that stood for over 55 years in Harlem. A cultural landmark whose gentle thrum of clipper buzz and convivial chatter still reverberates through the images.
Scales, a New York Times photo editor and teacher of photojournalism at NYU, began photographing the shop in 1986 following a chance encounter with owner David House. “One day he noticed me photographing on the street outside,” Scales recalls to CR. “He asked if I would come in and take some photographs of his business because he was about to lose his lease.” Despite its location on Seventh Avenue, on the same block as Scales’ home, he had never stepped inside the shop with a camera.
Once welcomed in, however, Scales quickly became part of the furniture, committing to the project for the next half decade. In the early years, he shot there several days a week, gradually shifting to a few days a month as he got more into the groove. “It was a nice place to hang out and meet the people of the neighbourhood,” he says. Sometimes, Scales would even hire customers as assistants or security for commercial shoots he ran nearby.
