Francesca Allen — Konkursas

Francesca Allen's photographs of Konkursas Pasaulio Ilgaplaukės, Lithuania's yearly contest for the longest hair in the world.

In November 2024 the British photographer and a Lithuanian friend went to Kaunas to watch the contest in person. Girls and women in their hundreds walk a runway, gloved judges measure hair groomed with great care, and the day closes with the contestants shaking their hair out together. The event is half beauty pageant, half folk ritual, and ritual and coming of age are subjects that fascinate Allen.

Allen has said that hair shapes how others see us, and is tied up with identity, religion and culture, and with prejudice too. Her pictures move between old custom and modern life, between devotion and ambition, and are by turns strange and funny.

Chloé showed the series at Paris Photo 2025, as the second edition of its Chloé Arts programme. The book is the first in a run of titles Steidl is publishing with Chloé Arts.

Steidl and Chloé Arts, 2025. 72 pages, clothbound hardcover with a photograph tipped in, 23.7 x 29.8 cm.