Border barbershops a fascination for one Kalispell photographer

The faces. The stories. The history.

They grab Roy Jacobson's heart, his imagination.

They're a microcosm of how time marches through a town's life, of how different ingredients mix to create a community's personality.

At least from the male side.

Jacobson is into barbershops.

The old-style manly bastions where gossip and jokes are as important as haircuts, where a straight-razor shave is an excuse to talk with the boys.

That culture has fascinated Jacobson so much that he spent a good portion of the past two and a half years hunting for and photographing barbershops along the 2,300-mile border between the United States and Mexico.

The 62-year-old retired Kalispell carpenter has been a semi-pro photographer for most of his life. His latest photographic fixation is candid black-and-white portraits

Plus he's a "history freak," in love with the gritty, blue-collar West of the past 100 to 150 years - to the point where he has a big, carefully groomed handlebar mustache.

One day, Jacobson entered an old-style barbershop in Kalispell, and its ancient beauty clicked inside his soul.

The multi-decades-old chairs. The antique cabinet with barber tools. A church pew acting as a waiting bench. Animal heads mounted on the wall. The light hitting everything just right.

That spawned the idea of photographing barbers and their customers in old-style shops for a book.

He decided to straddle the American-Mexican border because the area appeared to have a huge concentration of old-style barbershops, although Jacobson also sees them slowly dying out.

"It's still very much an art down there. But It's changing. … It's literally almost taking a step back to the 19th century, like a time warp," Jacobson said.

In stretches of several weeks, he would go to Tucson, Ariz., to pick up a pickup truck and fifth-wheel camper he stored there. And he would wander the border country, talking to local historians and cops to find where old-time barbershops exist. He visited them. Many met his criteria; some did not. Jacobson photographed 50 to 60 shops between Tijuana and the Gulf of Mexico.

He would introduce himself to the barbers, trying to convince them to let him hang around for a few days to photograph life in their shops. Some agreed instantly. Many took a couple of days to think it over. A few took months before they were comfortable with the idea. Only two completely turned down Jacobson.

Then Jacobson would set up his camera and strobes in a barbershop and wait

For the right face. The right lighting. The right one-photo story.

"Everyone from all walks of life comes in. When you walk in, you can literally read the history of the community on the walls. … I'd sit in the shop and see everyone in the community from the roughest of cowboys to the mayor, and they all talk. …. Those faces, the way they showed life lived to the max," Jacobson said.

He added: "About as important as the photos were the stories I could hear."

Jacobson neatly wrote the information about the barbers and the stories about his subjects in small yellow-lined notepads.

"I was listening to history and photographing history," he said.

For example there was:

. Johnny Gibson, Tuscon's oldest barber at 85. He was a medic in the 101st Airborne Division when Normandy was invaded, serving in the same regiment featured in the "Band of Brothers" mini-series.

The Germans captured him as he unsuccessfully tried to save the lives of two machine-gunned friends. He spent three weeks working in a German hospital, with the Germans leaving him there when they had to evacuate. He was bandaging an officer at the siege of Bastogne when he was shot in the side, taking 17 months for recover. Gibson later served as a technical advisor on medics when the "Band of Brothers" was filmed.

. Estine Davis' barbershop in El Paso. She was the barber for the 1966 Texas Western University basketball team, which fielded the first all-black starting lineup in the NCAA championship game to beat an all-white University of Kentucky squad.

. The Barragan family, which owned a few El Paso barbershops for 95 years. All the Barragans who were barbers were also former boxers. One brother, Hector, was once the leading bullfighter in Juarez across the border.

. The Tuscon shop where several barbers played guitar and accordion, and formed their own Tejano music band.

. A Mexican in a Tijuana barbershop with a mean-looking Fu Manchu mustache that hung a few inches below his chin. He made fun of Jacobson's handlebar mustache, calling it wimpy.

. A beautiful, but long-closed barbershop in Brownsville, Texas, whose longtime owner consented to be photographed in it.

"Being allowed into these lives is an absolute honor, Jacobson said.

Mexican barbershops intrigued Jacobson with young men being apprenticed to old barbers, who were considered master craftsmen.

Although all the barbershops on both sides of the border had different personalities, Jacobson spotted a common thread in the Mexican establishments.

All had religious icons such as crucifixes and pictures of saints. And all had girlie pictures, ranging from G-rated to X-rated.

One of Jacobson's favorite photos has the town priest getting a haircut with a nude pin-up reflected in the big mirror behind him.

Photographing barbershops often was a technical nightmare, Jacobson said.

The shops were small. Narrow. Mostly dark. Fluorescent lights. Lots of big mirrors playing havoc with lights and angles.

Ultimately, Jacobson shot 1,800 to 2,000 photos. He and his partner - Kalispell darkroom technician and photo printer Brenda Corbin - are editing those photos down to roughly 100. Jacobson is approaching publishers to see if any are interested in the book. He hopes to have it ready early next year.

Meanwhile, he is working on a similar barbershop photo book for Montana.

And he is also brainstorming a potential photo book on looking at Montana's Main Streets through windshields - again trying to capture the history and personality of a community.