By David Topping

If you ever need a recommendation for a good shave, perm, or trim, Tomasz Roszkowski probably has a few ideas. The photographer, who goes on Flickr by tommyroscoe, spent his November at eleven different barbershops and salons across the core of the city—from Guerreiros on Augusta Avenue down in the heart of Kensington Market to ACE Beauty Salon and Crew Cut Barbering, two shops beside one another up on Rogers Road.
Says Roszkowski on his project’s set on Flickr:

As gentrification continues and the face of the city evolves, these barbershops seem resilient to change. Living museums of Toronto’s recent past.
The aging shops were cluttered with personal artifacts, documenting not only the lives of the proprietors, but painting a specific history of small corners of this city.
Even though I sought out shops which had a clear ethnic identity, I discovered that the make-up of the shops’ clientele was diverse, and allegiance to a shop extended beyond ethnicity. It was a reminder of the deeply ingrained integrated nature of Toronto.
As I spoke to the owners, a common complaint was that there were fewer and fewer customers. The neighbourhood was changing. These barbershops were snapshots, vignettes of Toronto’s cultural history, unmistakably fading away.

Roszkowski’s photos are lively and diverse: he wisely focuses not only on the shops’ workers and clients, but also on the processes that define the trade and the tools that define each location, from razor blades to glamour shots to bibles.
A gallery of his photos is above.
All photos by Tomasz Roszkowski.