Sevens Clash on Street Life in Jamaica
Last August, photographer Alexander Richter and writer Sean Stewart set out for Kingston, Jamaica, with a singular vision in mind. The duo planned to document the city’s cultural scene for a new online magazine they founded with friend and graphic designer Anthony Harrison. The publication, dubbed Sevens Clash in homage to the reggae song “Two Sevens Clash” by the band Culture, was conceived as a vehicle to tell the lesser-known stories of Kingston from a street-level point of view. To provide readers with unfiltered access to the city’s art, music, sports, and street life, however, the pair would have to do so in a compressed, one-week time frame — the duration of their self-financed trip.
Stewart, who grew up in Jamaica, had arranged for he and Richter to stay at his father’s home in Kingston. And in order to gain access to a number of sources and subjects in a short amount of time, he enlisted the help of an old friend. “My longtime homie James Porteous, aka JP DA Manager, was our fixer,” Stewart says. “He was instrumental in getting shit together.” The resulting reports and photographs offer a colorful and revealing document of day-to-day life in Kingston — from profiles of dancehall artist Tommy Lee and the aptly named Tattoo Phillip (who is, after all, a tattooist), to record shopping at Rockers on “Beat Street” and late-night encounters on Ripon Road, to name only a few.
