As Covid-19 continues to keep us apart from our friends, Helen McGuckin decided to take matters into her own hands and build a set of new ones. “I’ve been creating my own ‘friends’ in my backyard since the beginning of the lockdown,” the fashion stylist and art director jokes. Created in collaboration with her neighbour, photographer Owen Richards, McGuckin has kept busy by building makeshift sculptures, silhouettes and scenes in her garden using household materials and objects found on her daily walks, leaving them for Richards to ‘find’ and shoot as he wishes.

Titled Making Friends, the vignettes are a light-hearted yet surprisingly apt depiction of the emotional ebbs and flows of life in lockdown. “Each build is based on the pandemic, whatever is happening in the news or my ever-changing moods,” McGuckin explains. Below, McGuckin and Richards share a number of hair-themed images from the series, in which they visualise a world of haircuts on hold.

‘D.I.Y Or Dye’ – for those who have been hacking away at the hair for weeks.

‘In The Red’ – dedicated to people’s financial trouble and stress.

‘Overgrown’ – the rest of the country’s quite literally overgrown do’s.

‘Hairball’ – because I’m sick of it all.