Dreads

Description

Dreadlocks are a modern phenomenon with roots reaching as far back as the fifth century. According to ancient Hindu beliefs, dreads signified a singleminded pursuit of the spiritual. Devotion to God displaced vanity, and hair was left to its own devices.Dreads captures this organic explosion of hair in all its beautiful, subversive glory. One hundred duotone portraits present dread-heads from around the world, in all walks of life. Interviewed on location by the photographers, jatta-wearers wax philosophic about the integrity of their hair, and every stunning image confirms their choice. Alice Walker puts words to pictures, offering lyrical ruminations about her decision to let her own mane mat.

Francesco Mastalia has spent the last twenty-five years mastering the art of the black-and-white photography. Advertising and corporate assignments dominate his career as a portrait photographer, while his commitment to documentary photography has taken him around the world. A native of Italy, he is now based in New York. Alfonse Pagano turned to photography as an art form in 1994, after a distinguished career as a painter, during which his mixed media and oil works were exhibited in such venues as the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Laguna Gloria Museum of Art. He is the recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts and Change, Inc., grants. Pagano lives in New York. Alice Walker is a poet and novelist whose work includes The Temple of My Familiar, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Color Purple, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. A longtime advocate of dreadlocks, she did not comb her hair for more than ten years.