Barbershops is a tribute to a romantic time when waiting in line was an excuse for a chat and when looking tip-top was a personal mantra. Once a hub of local news and activity, sacred to men and closed to women, the barbershop is slowly disappearing. Barbershops captures the original, beautiful, kitsch, and sometimes surreal beauty of these fading places. Featuring brilliant portraits, unusual decor, and heartbreaking stories, it will transport you to one of the most authentic spaces in our urban environment.

If walls could talk, they would tell of little boys’ first visits with their fathers, of potions and lotions applied to men’s beards and self-esteem, of great arguments held, of friendships made, broken, and made again. Barbershops captures the spirit of these moments in a unique book that unites photos and interviews to bring the reader a slice of barbershop life.

The book features characters like Menik the Sports Barber, whose salon floor is a painted replica of a hockey rink and who hosted a TV series from his chair; Jimmy, whose collection of taxidermy is a bizarre testament to his love of hunting; Pierre, the poet barber who sings opera and dreams of Greece; Poquito, whose shop is so busy that he sometimes stays overnight, sleeping in his barber-chair; and Mike, the bowling barber whose trophies line the walls of his shop.

With photographs by Claudine Sauvé and interviews by Tally Abecassis, Barbershops is an original, beautiful, kitsch, and often poignant ode to a romantic element of contemporary life.