Gustavo Villareal, 58, has been the sole proprietor of his hair salon for four years, and he has worked there since he graduated from beauty school in 1970. But over the past year, his latent interest in photography has continued to grow, and he'll soon exhibit his work in his second professional showing.

Though he is just now starting to sell his work, he's been interested in photography for decades.

"In 1970, I lost a sister to a car crash. She was one of those people who hated to have her picture taken, so we didn't have any," Villareal said. "I have problems visualizing my family's past, and I'm a big one for memory—it's really important to me."

Villareal is one of 15 children—five brothers and six sisters. His father came to the United States from Mexico and married his mother, who was from Texas. The family moved to San Jose in 1947 so his father, a preacher and carpenter, could start a Baptist church. Villareal grew up in the Willow Glen area of San Jose and graduated from Lincoln High School. Immediately after graduation, he went to beauty school and began working at the Cupertino salon he now owns right out of school. "I came from a poor family," he said.

He bought his hair salon—off of Foothill Boulevard in the Monta Vista area—from the family that had operated it for years, and he also moved nearby four years ago. Villareal walks to work every day.

Photography remained a hobby until what he calls a "serendipitous meeting" last May.

"I was invited to a classical concert, and my companion told me he was submitting paintings to galleries in New York City. He needed slides to send to them," Villareal explains. He received the commission for the slides, and his friend eventually scored a show in San Francisco. While attending the exhibit, Villareal spoke with the curator, who complimented the slides' photographer without realizing he was speaking to the same person.

Villareal submitted samples of his own work, and was then invited to participate in a group show in San Francisco. Held earlier this year, it was called "Camaraderie #3." The show featured works grouped together in "salon style," which Villareal said makes it more difficult to appreciate the work. "In my first show, I was one of 50 artists, and beggars can't be choosers," he said. "But it's really nice how this worked out."

It worked out because that initial show caught the attention of Rumi Missabu, the curator of Villareal's next exhibit starting in January. "He was in my last show, and I was very comfortable working with him," Missabu said. Villareal will be helping Missabu both as an intern and an exhibitor in this new show, called "A Cocktail of Glamour & Anarchy."

"I really like the bleached-out look of a lot of his work. Gustavo needed a little shot in the arm to give him the self-esteem to show his work," Massabu said.

Villareal is a mostly self-taught photographer—he attended San José State University in the 1970s for an English/literature degree, and took several photography classes at De Anza College over the past decade. But much of his training took place at family reunions and on the vacations where he seeks out the images that intrigue him.

"I think composition is my talent," Villareal said, describing the reunion where he snapped his relatives' faces in extreme close-up, sometimes not fitting their entire face in the frame. "I would come back from vacations, and I came to the realization that I was good at this because I'd show my pictures to other people and they'd say, 'Oh, you slipped a postcard in here.'"

He has traveled to Europe four times and explored different areas in the U.S., including Louisiana and Manhattan. But one of the places he has photographed the most is Mexico, the country of his father's origin. His next trip is to the Yucatan Peninsula.

"People say that it's dangerous, that there's a lot of poverty there," Villareal said, showing off photos of an impressive Mexican church—as well as a storefront that he said Americans would dismiss as ugly. "I can use photography as a podium for my values—I can become an ambassador. Pictorial language reaches more people because images are universal."

That language extends to areas of Cupertino as well. Villareal's zeal for cataloguing the past has spurred him to photograph everything from the barn buildings visible from his back porch to structures on the Stocklmeir property. "Fourteen-year-olds around here don't know about the orchards or that we were called the Valley of Heart's Delight. We have to preserve the past," he said. "If I know that a tree is coming down, I photograph it." Villareal said he takes his five different cameras with him almost everywhere he goes, though he likes his Pentax SLR the best.

His accumulation of images, hung with care at the front of his shop, has caught the eye of his customers, many of whom are longtime Cupertino residents. "I've been going to his shop for 15, 20 years," said Pat Dowling, an instructor at De Anza College who owns two of Villareal's photos. "He started hanging his photos up, and he has a real eye for the commonplace. He takes pictures of seemingly mundane things and transforms them into art."

Now that Villareal is developing a secondary career on top of his hair care business, he's starting to receive commissions and sell more of his work. He's photographed a client's jewelry, and he took a family to San Jose's Christmas in the Park for their Christmas card photo. And his loyal customers in the Monta Vista area who come back for their perms and trims keep him able to go on his photographic tours.

"I'm living the best life now," he said.

"A Cocktail of Glamour & Anarchy" will be showing at the Giorgi Gallery in Berkeley throughout the month of January. For more information call 510.848.1228 or visit www.giorgigallery.com.