Dreads

Dreads are a modern phenomena with roots that reach as far back as the fifth century. According to ancient Hindu beliefs, dreadlocks signified a singleminded pursuit of the spiritual. Devotion to God displaced vanity, and hair was left to its own devices.

Dreads captures this organic explosion of hair in all its beautiful, subversive glory. One hundred duotone portraits present dread-heads from around the world, in all walks of life. Interviewed on location by the photographers, jatta-wearers wax philosophic about the integrity of their hair, and every stunning image confirms their choice. Alice Walker puts words to pictures, offering lyrical ruminations about her decision to let her own mane mat.

School Library Journal

YA-This large, coffee-table type book with black-and-white photographs looks at the wide diversity of people who sport this knotted, ropelike hairdo. Some display it theatrically, while others wear it to stress their individuality. Others have religious or political reasons. The author also looks at dreadlocks in history, including the priests of the Ethiopian Coptic Church who have been locking their hair since the fifth century and the Rastafarian movement, which began religiously in Ethiopia. There is an introduction by Alice Walker as well as a 20-page treatise on "Sacred Rites of the Natural Hair Revolution." The 100 plates of men, women, and children in various cultures and at varying levels of modernity show this amazing hairstyle doing its thing in variety and abundance. The hair itself arouses interest and speculation as to the time involved in achieving it, the intricacies of the hygiene, and simply the wonder of it all.-Frances Reiher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Francesco Mastalia has spent the last twenty-five years mastering the art of the black-and-white photography. Advertising and corporate assignments dominate his career as a potrait photographer, while his commitment to documentary photography has taken him around the world. A native of Italy, he is now based in New York.

Alfonse Pagano turned to photography as an art form in 1994, after a distinguished career as a painter, during which his mixed media and oil works were exhibited in such venues as the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Laguna Gloria Museum of Art. He is the recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts and Change, Inc. grants. Pagano lives in New York.

Alice Walker is a poet and novelist whose work includes The Temple of My Familiar, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Color Purple, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. A longtime advocate of dreadlocks, she did not comb her hair for more than ten years.