J.D. Okhai Ojeikere: Photographs. - Review - book review

Black Issues Book Review, Nov, 2000 by Regina Woods, Kelly Ellis

J.D. Okhai Ojeikere: Photographs by Andre Magnin Scalo, August 2000, $45.00, ISBN 3-908247-30-6

The politics of hair is a tireless issue informing nearly every aspect of black contemporary life. How it's styled, who styles it and the exchanges that happen in the process have been a source of profound anxiety, pride, transformation and identity. Hair tales know no strangers in our communities. Whether discussed in passing while waiting in the movie line or at a gathering of close friends, once spoken, these twisted, straightened, blown out or interlocked tales weave a web that intimately bonds us to one another.

After reading LD. Okhai Ojeikere: Photographs and Hair in African Art and Culture, I am aware that each time we tell our tales of hair hopes and hair horrors, or participate in the routine ritual of doing hair or getting hair done, we also connect to our ancestors-creating a multidimensional, kinky transatlantic web that reaches back before time.

For more than three decades veteran photographer J.D. Okhai Ojeikere has documented the transformations and variations found in traditional hairstyles worn by women in his native Nigeria. His experiences as a photojournalist, commercial photographer and fine artist, steeped in the emergent cultural pride that accompanied Nigerian independence, come together in this collection of black-and-white photos to celebrate hairstyles, stylists and Nigerian culture heritage.

Although we are drawn to the elaborately parted and braided coiffures, Ojeikere's mission goes beyond a study in aesthetics. Each style has a place of origin, a meaning, a name and a history. He was first motivated to document these styles in the '50s when the popular use of wigs seemed to threaten traditional hairdressing. For Ojeikere, these photographs of glorious crowns serve as a documented memory of the past and a witness to a culture in constant evolution. As Ojeikere's photographs record 30 years of "hairstory," the masks, sculptures, and photographs in Hair in African Art and Culture record at least 3000 years. The elaborately carved rows or monumental crowns admired in the wooden sculptures of the Mende or Yoruba people in West Africa mirror the hairstyles worn today.

Published on the occasion of a traveling exhibition with the same name, the essays and artwork take us to initiation ceremonies, dances and naming ceremonies where hair is used to identify the wearer's cultural group, age, wealth and social affiliations. In the Sande society of Western Liberia, the entire community gathers for a public combing of the hair of prospective initiates (young girls) who gather with their friends and relatives in the center of town. This is one of the first rites of passage toward acceptance into the adult society of women.

Personally, this sheds light on the hours I spent as a child fidgeting anxiously between my momma's, grandma's or aunt's knees while they parted, greased and plaited my hair. Knowing now that I was being braided into hairstory, I almost wish I had sat still a little longer, listened more intently to their stories, settled down to record in my own memory every one of those moments that, connected me to all the women who came before and since, and those who are on their way.