I am always drawn to the skaters. Certainly there’s a nostalgic pull, a remembrance of my teenage years where, for the first time, I was allowed to roam the streets with friends or escape into my own world. But there’s something semi-sacred happening as well. A loosening of the body. A dramatic movement of the limbs as one’s center of gravity hurls forward. The body’s adjustments in the name of balance. The humbling (a pebble once sent me so hard into the concrete I thought I cracked my hip).
It’s a dance, truly, and not a type of vulnerability that’s normally seen in adolescent teenage boys. Skateboard Photography is it’s own unique subsection of Street Photography. It’s random, but it’s also a performance. It’s mostly failures. It’s gritty. It’s a challenge against one’s self, and yet it’s a community. An outcasted community. Because who in their right mind would choose to sacrifice balance, for the mere sake of finding it again. Who would trust themselves that much?
Or maybe I just like photographing people who are finding it again.