As a beard-wearer myself, I’m perhaps partial to men’s facial hair, and the wide diversity of styles and moods a beard can convey.
Photographer Jonathan Pryce has a Tumblr series of great photos called 100 Beards, 100 Days. Here’s a short interview with the photographer, via the Creative Book:
Could you tell us where the inspiration for 100 beards came from?
I’ve been photographing street style for a range of fashion clients and my men’s style for about 5 years now. Since winning Photographer of the Year at the Scottish Fashion Awards in June and moving to London a few months before, I wanted to do a new personal project which would re-ignite my passion for street photography. There’s a number of reasons for selecting beards, but it mainly boils down to my interest in the emergence of trends. The beard has reached a new peak in popularity and I wanted to be part of the documentation of that. Also, I’m useless at growing one myself so thought I’d live vicariously through others.
How do you decide on who to shoot? do you carefully choose the people to capture, arrange a date, or meeting, or hope someone walks in front of your lens?
As I spend a lot of time doing street photography I’m in the privileged position of pacing myself when finding subjects. After a month of the blog starting, I received a few requests from subjects who wanted to be photographed – some of which were just too good to turn down. I love the organic nature of the 100 Beard project though. Parallels emerge – for example two consecutive days with men both with the same name, beard style or nationality. There have been a lot of funny coincidences since I started on July 1st.
