Day 4: Hair by Sam McKnight

As the visitor moves from the street, and the hustle and bustle of London life, into the exhibition, the introductory section gives rather prosaic outline of who Sam McKnight is and what a session stylist does. The second section, however, entitled ‘Backstage’ plunges the visitor into a set up that apes the backstage area of a catwalk show, expertly orchestrated by the exhibition’s designer Michael Howells. This image captures one of the bound volumes on display, each an assemblage of the experiments McKnight and his team carry out on a fit model to test the hair looks ahead of the show. I selected to exhibit these two particular pages, as I really liked the names of the models for this Dries Van Noten show hand scrawled to outline the running order. - Shonagh Marshall, Curator

These process wigs, exhibited on the head blocks McKnight and his team work on in their studio, map out the way in which you achieve rick-racking - a technique used often by McKnight for designer Vivienne Westwood’s catwalk shows. This is a physical caricaturing of the historic illustrations within beauty magazines of the 1940s and 1950s, which mapped out how to achieve famous Hollywood actresses hairstyles. It acts as a chic ‘how to’, I wonder if anyone will see it within the exhibition and try it at home. - Shonagh Marshall, Curator

An important section to me within the exhibition is entitled ‘Timeline’. Sam has worked almost everyday for almost forty years so the breadth of his archive is phenomenal. Therefore the editing process was tough and everything had to be really tightly considered. This section maps out career defining moments for McKnight from his first shoot within the December 1977 issue of British Vogue, through to a shoot with Irving Penn in 1990. I felt it was really important for visitors to have this chronological context before journeying through the thematic sections. - Shonagh Marshall, Curator

Is hair really a subject that is worthy of academic study and a large exhibition at Somerset House? Great question, and something I have had to answer time and time again over the past three years whilst putting this exhibition together. This image is of a vitrine that sits in the centre of the ‘Storytelling’ section. It covers Sam’s role in transforming women through their hair, which has in turn had an impact on their career. McKnight has said ‘I can usually pick up if there is something going on in their life that makes them want to embrace something new.’ When unpacking this statement in relation to 1980s model Jeny Howorth and 2000s model Agyness Deyn, both of whom McKnight bleached and cropped their hair that impacted on their careers, we see the way hair has such transformative properties. By displaying these case studies we hoped that visitors would begin to make the connection with the way in which hair is so intrinsically linked to the creation of our personal identity. - Shonagh Marshall, Curator

Michael Howells had the idea to place display boxes of hair throughout the exhibition. These are to remind the visitor that it was an exploration of hair and it’s materiality. We were concerned that the exhibition was not solely a photographic exhibition. Here are the most beautiful finger waves in a bright magenta, which appear like thick strokes of paint. - Shonagh Marshall, Curator

At the heart of the exhibition is a section that looks at the important collaborations Sam has had with specific people within the fashion industry throughout his career. Featuring four photographers: Nick Knight, Patrick Demarchelier, Craig McDean and Tim Walker, two make-up artists: Mary Greenwell and Val Garland and four stylists: Lucinda Chambers, Kate Phelan, Edward Enninful and Carine Roitfeld. The exhibition as a whole is an exploration in positioning McKnight as an image-maker in his own right, however his role would not be possible without the team in which he works. Each collaborator is represented by one image personally selected by Sam. I then interviewed each person about how the image came into being, their quotes making up the captions that accompany it, with a cabinet alongside that displays objects loaned by each collaborator that represent their relationship with Sam. - Shonagh Marshall, Curator