Norwood Junction
It’s Friday and the platform is quieter than earlier in the week. Everyone looks tired. The energy of Monday is replaced with the anticipation of rest, of a few hours to come where we can relax and forget that we do this each day. I stand in the same place each day, knowing the door of the train will stop in front of me. I walk to the same seat, and look out of the same window at the same view. …
Like most men, my first experience of shaving was watching my father.
My father shaved with a double-edged safety razor. From an early age it was how I saw him first thing each morning, hunched over the kitchen sink in clouds of steam, the stove gases lit to warm our cold unheated house. His badger-hair brush was old and yellowing, and the razor was crusted in soap, but the blades were shining and fearsomely sharp. I stood and watched him in awe, the image of man.
The smells of shaving always reminded me of Victor Doe, the unreconstructed barbers that…
Martin Cleave
creative & art direction / photography / writing / illustration / mischief making
