"Study of modern hairstyles": Portraits of 20-year-olds

EVERY DAY PHOTOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLD looking for new ways to tell stories or to capture what we previously did not notice. We choose interesting photo projects and ask their authors what they wanted to say. This week is the "A Modern Hair Study" series by American photographer Tara Bogart, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the United States. Bogart grew up in a family where art was revered, and passion for him was encouraged, and her mother, also a photographer, took her with her to the shoot and showed her how to take photos. The "A Modern Hair Study" series is dedicated to hair and hairstyles, which can be the same talking as faces.

In 2011, I visited the photo archives of the National Library of France and saw a picture there that pursued me months after the visit. It was Felix Nadar's “Hairdo Study” - a woman shot from the back and her hair. I could not stop thinking about how this image would look today, so the series is called “Study of modern hairstyles” and consists of portraits of young women photographed from behind - so the viewer is forced to resist the absence of everything that, according to stereotypes makes a woman unique. These rather intimate portraits make me a voyeur focused on a generation to which I do not belong.

The entire series can be considered a curtsey in the direction of Felix Nadar. Firstly, the photographs depict twenty years old - about the same was the girl in his picture. Secondly, as you may have noticed, all the photos in the oval — the original photo was not framed by the oval; however, it was in an oval substrate. In fact, the most interesting thing for me is the 20-year-old generation — they are very keen on exploring their appearance, trying to determine who they are in the world and by themselves, as adults, with the help of it — a rather convincing approach. And, of course, it is more interesting for me to photograph women - I see something about myself in them, and also watch how young girls adapt to the challenges of our time. Did I try to figure out who I was? Of course, and who did not try. It seems to me that I now have more answers, because I have become a little older and, I hope, wiser. Despite this, I still try to find my place in the world and do not hesitate to talk about it, perfectly remembering how insecure I felt because of my beliefs and personal beauty. I was not worried about the issues of self-identification as women - it was the 80s and the gender lines were just beginning to blur. Especially when literally everyone wore pearls and eyeliner.

Although some ideals are the same for all generations, the ways in which women decorate and transform themselves often show how young people fight their own ideology and individuality. After I took pictures of these women, I saw that this struggle is infinite - it exists now just as it did in the times of the Nadar picture. I myself, by the way, platinum blonde.