Exercise 2c: barber shops in Mukono

I really had to be persistent to complete the assignment. Yesterday I visited the barbers I befriended. At first I thought I was lucky. The barber in the small blue stall down the market was cutting the hair of a boy who did not mind pictures . But the cut was nearly done, so I could only take a few pictures (see set 1). I started taking pictures from the door, and the first obvious thing was to try and play with the mirrors. The challenge with mirrors in the minuscule shop was not to be in the picture myself!

At first I mirrored the image of barber and client. Then I tried to cut the barber out, focusing only on his hands, but capturing his reflection in the mirror. I liked experimenting with this because I could then juxtapose different aspects of the interaction in the same picture: on one side the contact of hands and head, on the other the indifference, the distance in the relation. Are barber and client close or are they really in two separate worlds? To work further on this idea, in another picture I cut out the hands of the barber to take the perspective of the boy. The boy could see the barber only in the reflection, but the reflection was not enough to understand what the hands behind his head were doing. The results is a picture of two people that are distant from each other even if they are in close contact.

I wish I had the time experiment with moving to the back of the shop: I would have liked to capture barber and client, a hint of the shop, but also some of the landscape around, other stalls or by-passer, to give more a sense of the place: mighty barber and client in the foreground, as if they were in a big space… but a reality check of what the shop really look like by capturing similar ones in the background. Close to sanset, the light was just right to try to do so, still luminous but not falling directly on the lenses.

But no other client came. The boy paid (picture taken) and left. I had a nice chat with Byaluhang about how he built his stall, the cost of rent of the plot and of the electricity, with a meter shared across 5 shops. Electricity was essential to make lights and razor work, but really unreliable, so one of the dreams of Byaluhang was to get a generator. Another dream was to get a larger mirror, and a tv set for his family. He is working hard for this: in the day he farms at the outskirts of Mukono, in the evening he comes to the shop. His wife popped in with a baby at the back. She was his second wife, the first one was still at the village with three children. As the light went off and no client came I moved away, to visit the barber shop of Peter by the matatu station. No luck there: by the time I talked myself in again, I could jsut do three bad shots in a hurry of a client… (set 2). Again lots of nice chatting, with Peter and his shop neighbours, but no one else came. Dinner time is a dead time, and the barber was basically waiting for the generator to run out of petrol to close. Shop opening time is: from 7 or 8 AM… until that time late evening when the petrol in the generator finishes.

Today I went again to the shop of Peter. No luck again. He was chatting with a friend, but no clients. I was offered to sit on a bench out of the shop. When conversation stalled, I resorted to take a few pictures of Peter and his friend as they were just killing time without talking any longer. (set 3) I did not move from where I was and I tried to experiment with the plastic curtain of the shop. At some point I started pushing the little plastic chains of the curtain to try and capture the face of the friend and the reflection of the barber behind the moving curtain. I removed from the set the shots that were obviously wrong, with the chains hiding their face, but with some luck at the end I got one shot right.

Incidentally, these pictures, as others in the set, show my problems in getting the exposure right when photographing black people, especially when they are wearing / they are surrounded by white. I still did not master the best way to do so. Need exercise and advice on this.

I walked to the little Byaluhang stall, but it was closed! I asked to the barber next door if he was well and coming. He was not really sure, but, surprise surprise, this time – probably hit but my stubbornness at obtaining barber’s pictures - he told me that I could take pictures of him! (set 4) I tried again to play with mirrors a bit, juxtaposing images. I also tried to work out where would it be better to focus: on the real people or on the images in the mirror? I feel that the pics I took focusing on the mirror image could have worked well if I had gone closer / changed the focal length. I also noticed that Patrick, the barber was of a very dark complexion and tall enough to be in the shadow when the light was coming nearly horizontally from outside. Probably I could have used better the challenge of having his head in the dark. Maybe I could have pushed this contrast further, and added a bit of mystery to the picture by making him disappearing in the background?

I then managed to reach the panoramic point of the shop, a chair on the back, and from them I could also put in the picture a client waiting, which was an interesting subject as he was lit by the sun. One image I like has him at the centre, looking outside, oblivious of the action happening in front of him and, replicated ab infinitum on the mirror behind him (not to mention an odd white person hopping on chairs). Bad news is that I focused badly and he is not really 100% sharp. I then moved to the outside of the shop, I composed my pictures placing the door lock in the top left corner, to show the shop outside and I aligned the composition on the main shelf. I liked that angle, but I feel that I got the exposure wrong, just a bit too dark.

I moved further to the outside, to show more of the shop. I wanted to show that this interaction was really happening in a small wooden box, but I could not get the light right, I would either overexpose the door or underexpose the people. I am happy of how in most instances I managed to use the central axis of the door to divide the composition (either separating Patrick and client of their bodies from their reflection). Probably I should have focused more on the left side of the door, which was in shadow and had a texture, and cut out the right.

The only disappointment is that Patrick does not have a postal address so I will not be able to send him a nice copy of his pictures. But I managed at least to print a few pics on paper, I wonder if they will ever make it to the walls of its shop, maybe close to his Saddam Hussain poster!