Prior to this one morning I had only been in the Sharper Image Barber Shop one time for a haircut. A short walk from my home in the Greenwood section of Wakefield, Massachusetts, he shop had reopened under new management only a few months before. This morning I was standing behind a cameras setting up an environmental portrait of the owner, Master Barber Charlene Harrington, amidst the barber chairs and sports memorabilia on the walls. A great visual dividend – the shop’s name perfectly reflected in one of the mirrors. The natural light streaming in one of the windows was better than I could have hoped for. It all came together.
This was the second portrait in an impromptu series – the Women Business Owners in Wakefield Portrait Project. The idea came out of a telephone conversation with my eldest daughter, Allyson, who, in her capacity at The Savings Bank, has a lot of contact with business owners in Wakefield and Greenwood. She was telling me about the number of businesses in the town that are owned and operated by women. The impetus for the project was to let other people know about these businesses and honor these women leading up to International Women’s Day.
Wakefield Daily Item editor Bob Burgess agreed to publish the series in succeeding issues of the local newspaper, accompanied by a short text about the owner and her business. The series would also be exhibited outside the Wakefield Human Rights Commission’s International Women’s Day program on March 6th. With that deadline in mind, portrait sessions, each on location in the respective owner’s business location, were booked through March 5th to allow all the portraits to be ready for the following evening. I identified twenty-eight such businesses and reached out to each.
Environmental portraiture – portraits that show not just what the subject looks like but who they are – has always been a major area of my work as a photographer. Although there have been such portraits made off the cuff because and opportunity arose or a composition presented itself in a given moment, for the most part, I spend time researching the subject, making sketches, and prepping the shoot. The aspect of this short term portrait project that appealed to me as a photographer was taking me out of my usual comfort zone. In this project, I had to walk into an owner’s shop, with just a tripod and a camera bag, leaving the light stands and location flashes at home. I gave myself a half-hour to evaluate the location, figure out the composition, and make the photograph.
Each subject was sent the selected portrait in both color and black-and-white to choose from and the text to accompany the photograph to confirm accuracy.
Of the twenty-eight businesses initially contacted, thirteen booked portrait shoots. To date, there has been very positive feedback to the portrait project and to the larger outcome of letting people in the town know about these different businesses and the owner/owners behind them.
For myself, the most important aspect of doing the Women Business Owners in Wakefield Portrait Project went beyond just creating each portrait in the series; it was hearing the stories behind each business and owner – how each got to where she is today, how and why she opened the business, and what she hoped to achieve in the future.
With the completion of this project, there are already thoughts and ideas for similar projects in the future.
(originally published on Linkedin.com)
To view the full set of portraits: WBOW