For decades, the Kenmore Salon on Toller Lane was a familiar fixture of Nudrat Afza’s daily life, a landmark she passed every afternoon from the window of the school bus during her teenage years in Bradford. Inside its doors lay a remarkably preserved time capsule of late-modern British design, featuring authentic decor from the late 1970s and early 1980s. In its mid-century heyday, the salon was a bustling community institution that employed five staff members, opened late into the evenings, and served as a central place to gather.
Knowing that the long-time owner, Kenneth Moore, was approaching retirement and preparing to sell the historic business, Afza felt a pressing urge to document its final chapter before it vanished. To gain access, she booked an appointment for her daughter Khadijah to have her hair cut, struck up a conversation with the staff, and secured Ken’s warm permission to photograph the salon’s final year of operation.
This self-funded, deeply personal project was captured using handheld cameras, often in spontaneous moments of connection. Afza’s time in the salon was carved out during moments of intense personal vulnerability; as a full-time carer for her daughter, she frequently walked the short distance from Khadijah’s bedside at the nearby Bradford Royal Infirmary to the salon at the end of the hospital road to photograph Ken’s final clients. The resulting images—capturing Ken waving through the window or the precise, tactile geometry of hair cutting—are a poignant testament to working-class craft, community intimacy, and a passing era of British high street history.
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Date:
2 March 2021
