TOP TEES OF THE SEASON

Terratag
www.terratag.com

Supreme Being
www.supremebeing.com

Your Eyes Lie
www.youreyeslie.com

Dephect
www.dephect.com

Aerosoul
www.aerosoul.co.uk

A Hackney Hairstory by Fran Cornford

It’s an early afternoon in Hackney on one of those sunless days in autumn and I’m walking around Dalston with my camera. I ‘m looking for hairdressers to take some portraits and more importantly to see what makes this place tick.
The first person I meet is Jummy of Jummy hairdressers ‘You want to take pictures of me?’ most people said when asked to have their picture taken, they seem astounded almost upset but Jummy is different. She’s bursting with energy, the kind that is infectious and it fills the whole salon. Her client grins in her chair, ‘Best hair salon in Hackney’. Looking at Jummy I am in no doubt.
Hairdresser’s salons are about so much more than your hair, it’s about self-expression, feeling good and connecting. With Juju you are instantly connected. She showed me pictures other people had taken in Hackney through the years, ‘I’ve seen a lot, heard a lot of stories, I know a lot of secrets’. I would have been perfectly content sitting there all afternoon hiding from the rain hearing Jummy talk about her life and taking in the sheer mass of memories that her salon was hiding.
But alas I had to carry on my journey and came across some more interesting characters. They too had met a lot of people and had heard a lot of stories but no one had asked them their own. Two hairdressers I spoke to on Mare Street had come across about six months ago from China and made quick work with their clients. ‘The culture here, we love the culture, the people’. Some just talk me through what they were doing ‘He wants something different, something different to his mates, he wants to stand out.’ One kid was getting his hair shaved and he simply said ‘It’s about creating your own identity within your own culture’. He created a whole new persona for himself each time he got his haircut.
Everyone I photograph stood out for a reason whether it was the stories they told of how they got here or why they were working. Ultimately though it was their love of connecting with people that brought them to the salon.

Happy New Year yos..

It's been a while since Sed*8 has hit the airwaves, webwaves or whatever this may be.. but we're back and with a very serious mission for 2009. We have just applied to The Big Challenge:

http://www.bigchallenge.org.uk/

to secure funding to go ahead with the Sed*8 project.

We want to run a series of workshops to train people from 16 to 23 in East London in the different disciplines of magazine production and online publishing. Show your support by logging on to The Big Challenge website, hitting the 'Entries' link, scrolling down to Sed*8 and leaving your supporting comment and general praise.

For more information on the project contact sed8mag@gmail.com

Swiss gets serious

Last week we met Swiss of So Solid Crew fame at the launch of his book 'Spot the Difference: Raising you game to reach your full potential". The book is full of practical advice on how young people can work towards a successful career and a more fulfilled life.

Here's a choice cut of what the man had to say..

"(The book) highlights the things that stop us from elevating as young people. It points out different aspects of ourselves that we can focus on and use to fine tune those other things that we may be lacking so we can propel us to go further and do better for ourselves."

"A lot of us as young people were good at being bad, we were good at stealing, good at smoking, good at wasting time. It’s easy to do something when you’re good at it."

StreetPix

Our eye on the street photographer Lilian Ampon caught these stylish motha fucka's on her amblings through Londontown..

Hip Hop Flyas

On Tuesday night, down at LCC, the crew at Hip-Hop Histories had an exhibition of flyers from the early days. Here's a taste of what we saw..