Since accepting the nature of my own hair and letting my curls out, I’ve encountered multiple situations in which strangers touched my hair, mostly without asking for permission. These moments inspired me to question the intimacy behind touch and hair, especially the relationship between a hairdresser and the model, while exploring one’s identity through it.

The project “TIES” sets out to explore the societal limits around intimacy and hair, particularly its tactile nature. As a species, we exhibit an overwhelming preoccupation with our hair or that of others’. I decided to combine the investigation of hair’s interpretations with that of its tactile characteristics, asking the question: “When does hair go from the public to the intimate?”.

Intimacy cannot have a single definition. It is usually defined like one or more experiences of transcendence or intense emotion and touching hair is certainly one of them in my opinion, overlapping with concepts such as love, closeness, self-disclosure, support, bonding, attachment and sexuality.

Hair can be touched and played with in full view of one’s fellow humans in a way that other parts of the body cannot, and it is therefore used as a way of expressing repressed thoughts.

Intimacy usually denotes mutual vulnerability, openness, and sharing, but it’s still a broad concept that can vary based on the person experiencing it. The gesture of touching hair comes along with trust, consent and even security.

Intimacy usually denotes mutual vulnerability, openness, and sharing, but it’s still a broad concept that can vary based on the person experiencing it. The gesture of touching hair comes along with trust, consent and even security.

These editorial photos focus on someone’s identity highlighted by their hairstyle, but also imagine disembodied hair having its own life. Once it is removed from the body, hair seems to have an eerie ability to survive beyond us, going from something adorned to something unfamiliar.