Historian, Antawan I. Byrd: The hairstyles project is often described as Ojeikere’s most ambitious body of work, and it’s a body of work that he pursued over nearly half a century.
My name’s Antawan Byrd. I’m an art historian and curator based in Chicago.
J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere evolved as a photographer alongside major political shifts in Nigerian history. 1960 is when the country attains independence from British rule. Ojeikere began to attend many of the festivals that were celebrating traditional culture. Hair design was coming back into fashion after a long period of being regarded as retrograde by the colonial government. It was at one of those festivals that he began to make his earliest images of Nigerian hairstyles.
He was so fascinated by the nuances of the designs as you encounter them from different angles. Some of the hair designs are straightforward cornrow styles, whereas others are realized through the use of thread that’s been wrapped around strands of hair.
Many of the hair designs carry references to contemporary bridges and buildings in terms of their architectural design. That’s in part because after independence, the nation is being built, the skyline is being built, the hairstyles are being built. And so I think for Ojeikere, he was conscious of the multiplicity of changes that were happening. It’s simultaneously about hair and the tradition of hair, and yet it’s also about architecture and commerce and trade.