Each photograph shows a woman from behind or from the side, her face turned away. The focus is on her hair: braids woven into towers, spirals, crowns and branches, threaded with black cotton or wrapped in elaborate shapes. The pictures are in black and white, simple and precise. Together they form one of the most remarkable records of African culture ever made. They are the work of J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, a Nigerian photographer who spent decades documenting the hairstyles of women across his country.
Early life and the Hairstyles series
Johnson Donatus Aihumekeokhai Ojeikere was born in 1930 in Ovbiomu-Emai, in what is now Edo State. He bought his first camera as a young man and taught himself photography. He worked as a darkroom assistant and then as a photographer for government information services and later for advertising agencies. Based in Lagos, he photographed the city and its people during the years after independence.
In 1968 he began photographing hairstyles, a project that would occupy him for decades. He eventually took around a thousand images.
Why hair and his method
Ojeikere saw hairstyles as a form of sculpture and as a record of culture. Styles carried meanings related to age, status, occasion and fashion. He photographed his subjects from behind, against plain backgrounds, so that the hair itself became the subject. The approach gave the images a scientific clarity and an artistic beauty. The series includes styles made with thread, a technique where hair is wrapped tightly with black cotton, as well as braids and plaits of many kinds.
He also photographed the elaborate headties, or gele, worn by Nigerian women at celebrations.
Recognition and legacy
His work became widely known internationally in the 1990s and 2000s, with exhibitions in Europe, including at the Venice Biennale in 2013. His photographs are held in major museum collections. J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere died in Lagos in 2014. His archive is treasured as both art and history, preserving styles that might otherwise have been forgotten. Many of the styles he photographed are rarely worn today. His pictures allow hairdressers and historians to study techniques that were once common in Nigerian cities and villages.
Hairstyles in Lagos change from season to season. Ojeikere’s camera caught a thousand of them before they were combed out.
