Along with the “Hoody” generation, the skateboarding sub-culture, has, for the most part been stereotyped as a being bad influence on the teenage generation. Yet in reality, most of the people who I know, after 18 years of skateboarding, have grown up to become successful entrepreneurs, professionals, role models or athletes.Although I started late in life at the grand old age of 17, skateboarding quickly took me under its wing and arguably took over my life completely influencing every facet. As I’ve grown up with my peers and we have gone on to bring up our own children, I started to wonder how they will be perceived. Some of them are already starting to skateboard, would they be looked at in the same way? During the course of my degree, I developed a great interest and love of the environmental portrait. I’ve always been a fan of musical portraits and of portraits taken in war zones or famine, but it wasn’t until I came across the work of Arnold Newman and a subsequent interview, that I really started to understand a bit more about what makes a good portrait. One quote in particular seemed to have particular resonance.
"No one photograph can say everything, no one photograph is a complete portrait"
I’ve always been fascinated in documenting and photographing the skateboarding culture but taking individual portraits had never done it justice in the past. So the idea of taking a collective portrait, that comprised of several different individual subjects made perfect sense.
I’ve taken portraits of three young knives in their formative years and then three survivors, who have lived through all of the experiences that the pastime brings with it and come out the other side, having proved their detractors wrong.
The images of the youths have each been taken in main skating environments, Street, at the entrance to an indoor skate park and an outside concrete park. I’ve tried to capture them in a location that evokes the kind of tabloid headlines that usually go with the territory, which I myself have had the pleasure of being included in when I was their age.
The aim of the portraits in the older category was to capture them either in their place of work, or in surroundings that befitted their interests.
What do you think they do? What does society think they do, based on their first impression.
Research
As research for the project, I distributed a number of questionnaires to a very varied selection of skaters both past and present that I've had the pleasure of knowing and know of. Unfortunately I didn't feel that I could include their completed replies in the exhibition itself so I took soundbites from the 6 photographed subjects instead. These were then printed onto old boards and used as name plaques. Now that I have more time though, I've been able to collate all of the different parts of the project, all of the different replies and post them online in this gallery. I just thought that they were too valuable to be just forgotten. I think the responses give a fascinating insight into the psyche of at least three different generations, and how each person has gone onto to progress in life having been influenced by, in simplistic terms, just a piece of wood attached to 4 wheels.
The Questionnaires
Click on a link and it will take you to a different skater's responses, detailing their name, age, vocation and life experiences with skateboarding.