Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

Big bushy beards have gained such fashionable ubiquity that there's now an art exhibition dedicated to them. Brock Elbank's photography exhibition of pogonophiles, the Greek for beard lovers, is at Somerset House in London. Since about 2007 Brock has been finding people, both men and women, around the world with unique or flamboyant facial hair to be a part of his photography project. Brock Elbank, photographer behind 'Beard' at Somerset House, told Today: ‘Everyone that Jimmy, one of the stars of the gallery, and I seem to meet see him as a rock star… he is the beard rock star.’ ‘I’ve tried to get a wide variety of beards and we had people fly in from all over the world to have their picture taken.’ Lucinda Hawksley is author of Moustaches, Whiskers and Beards and she told Today: ‘When I was writing the book I came to realise that the most heavily-bearded times in Britain are either when women are in power… or when there’s a big discussion on feminism… It may be pure coincidence but you get a woman on the throne or heightened prominence of feminism and men think; I have to grow a beard!’