shurong diao forms hair alphabet from long locks

shurong diao forms hair alphabet from long locks
all images courtesy of shurong diao

new york-based artist shurong diao has used hair to craft the entire alphabet of roman letter forms. with long locks of both real and hair extensions as the typographic medium, diao has constructed the lowercase characters by twisting, twirling and stretching it into the various ascenders and descenders that make up the sans-serif typeface. the body of the photographed model interacts with each letter, overlapping hair and skin to form a visual relationship with each other. drawing a comparison to a cultural reference, diao says ‘I wanted to build a connection between chinese characters and roman alphabet by using different forms of long black hair, just like putting ink on rice paper to draw chinese characters’.

 
the full alphabet

the artist spells out the word ‘show’ with her hair

an animated gif shows the many letter forms created