Before I tell you about Wayne, here is a little background about my personal work. It’s not a large body of work but it continues as inspiration strikes. I think of this work as “off the grid.” It started in 1990 in downtown St. Paul near a homeless shelter. Back then, shooting a Hasselblad on a tripod with a portable flash on a stand, I’d set up and wait for people to approach me, then see if they were willing to pose for a 12-exposure roll of black and white. Having my own darkroom, I’d spend countless hours developing and printing the images. I felt good about the results for the short amount of hours I spent on the street. One afternoon, after hauling the gear and setting up, I realized the location had problems. A man about a half-block away spotted me, reached into a garbage can, picked up a whiskey bottle, cracked it over the curb, and came after me. I grabbed my gear and started backing up. He was within 30 feet when another guy came racing out of nowhere and knocked the bottle out of his hand. They both took off the other way. That was the end of my personal work for a while. Some of my other subjects over the years have included a junk store dealer, a truck stop minister and a pair of 70-something sheep farmer brothers in Wisconsin.
Now, what about Wayne the barber? While getting my hair cut a couple months ago, one conversation lead to another. I found out that Wayne had been stabbed in the heart in 1981. Being near death, he lost 60 pounds in 16 days. He slowly recovered. Then in 1982, he had another major heart surgery and became a case study for the doctor.
I kept thinking about his amazing story, so I brought my camera for the next hair cut. We probably spent 5 minutes taking these images in the middle of the day. No flash, no reflectors, just light and life as it is at the barber shop. Then a bit of post processing.
In this first photo, Wayne (at right) compares heart surgery scars with Tim, another barber at the shop.
