MAASTRICHT.- The artistic practice of photographer, painter, graphic artist and designer Ed Templeton (Garden Grove, California, 1972) has been fuelled by his career as a professional skateboarder beginning in 1990. Since 1993, he has also been the owner of the skateboard brand Toy Machine, for which he still designs the artwork. Throughout his career, Templeton has documented the skateboard culture he was active in using his 35-mm camera. This has resulted in decades of detailed diaries and visual reports. Templetons’ works surpass the autobiographical and depict skateboarding as a unique and singular subculture unto itself.

His artwork and photographs, sometimes painted on and annotated, have been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide. In 2021, MoMA acquired 82 photographs by Ed and his wife Deanna Templeton for its collection. Both as a skater and as an artist, he leaves behind an unmistakable impression.

This is not the first time Templeton has exhibited in the Bonnefanten. In 2014, the museum presented his photographic series titled Wayward Cognitions. Both the exhibition and the artist’s book showcased prints selected from his archive that he intuitively curated as a meditation on human nature. The spontaneity and incisive observations from 2014 are also apparent in this current exhibition, which is a visually rich look into the lives of pro skatebaorders at a time just before cell phones and social media changed society forever. We are given behind the scenes access through Templetons’ unique position. Fleeting moments with fans, clashes with authorities, the boredom of life on tour. The ecstasy of skateboarding itself, along with the brutality it can exact. This body of photographs covers a period roughly from 1995 to 2012 and serves as an important visual time capsule of a culture during a specific period in its evolution. They are ordered thematically rather than chronologically. This visitors’ guide hopes to illuminate some of the recurring themes in this exhibition.

“The title Wires Crossed”, Templeton states, “comes from my belief that to be a skateboarder you need to have a few wires crossed in your brain. I mean this in the best possible way. Skateboarding is a physically demanding piece of performance art done in response to, and often in defiance of an architectural space and the objects within it. Ephemeral in nature, it relies on photography and video to capture it’s essence, to document it’s actions.”

Skateboarding

In the early 1980’s, Ed Templeton’s family moved house several times around Southern California following his mother’s divorce with his father. Eventually, they settled in Huntington Beach, a middle-class suburb of Los Angeles where his grandparents lived. That was where Templeton first came into contact with skateboarding, at the age of thirteen. Known as Surf City USA Huntington Beach is a famous surfing haven, and so surfing and skateboarding were very popular within the youth culture there. He watched neighbourhood kids skateboarding on the streets, jumping up and down the curbs and was inspired to learn this himself. This burgeoning street style skateboarding was characterized by using existing architectural forms like ledges, stairs, handrails, and picnic tables as obstacles.

One of the most famous early pioneers of street skating, Mark Gonzales, also lived in Huntington Beach, and this put the young Templeton in proximity to one of the all-time greats. On meeting Gonzales in a local skate shop, where he saw the skateboarder do various tricks, Templeton was so impressed that he felt ‘floored’. It was a catalyst, and he became obsessed with skateboarding to the detriment of his schoolwork and the dismay of his family.

By 1990, Templeton signed a professional sponsorship deal with New Deal Skateboards, which opened up the skateboard world outside California to him. Like a band, Templeton and his colleagues (who soon became friends) went on annual tours of the United States and Europe. The maps in this exhibition illustrate how far and long these summer tours were.

After leaving New Deal Skateboards in 1992, Templeton briefly did a company called TV with fellow pro Mike Vallely. By late 1993 he had founded his own skateboard brand, Toy Machine Bloodsucking Skateboard Company, which he still runs to this day. This year is the 30th anniversary.

Coming-of-age

Templeton’s oeuvre gives an affectionate glimpse of his life with his friends and colleagues. They have found themselves together in an exceptional position. They are young adults with very little responsibility who are suddenly earning money and gaining an enormous amount of fame and freedom through skateboarding. On these long tours, they explore their own boundaries both physically and mentally. The photos play heavily on coming-of-age themes, and show the twilight zone between adolescence and adult life.

In Templeton’s photos, we see groups of young people discovering life on the road. Traveling and working, and doing things that might be forbidden at home. “Technically we’re at work, doing our jobs, although it rarely felt like work.” Templeton said. For some it was a voyage of sexual discovery, trying to hook up with women, buying porn, and leveraging their fame if possible in these pursuits. Templeton’s lens records every moment without judgement, which results in intimate scenes that are both tender and awkward. Naive, gauche and over-enthusiastic the viewer can sometimes taste the embarrassment and unpleasantness in these people’s lives.

The eye of the storm

You could call Ed Templeton a voyeur. Although he is part of the group of skateboarders, he also stands outside them. Whereas others take drugs and drink alcohol, and enter into brief sexual relationships, Templeton is quietness itself. He doesn’t use any drugs, has been with his wife since his teenage years and often adopts a role of responsibility within the group.

This creates a special relationship between him and his subjects. There is a great bond of trust between the photographer and those he portrays, and yet there is a certain distance between them that lends the photos a contemplative character. Templeton is like the eye of the storm; quiet and observant, while life whirls around him.

This is shown well in the photo Billy Marks shoots arrow in hotel room (2004). In this photo, the young professional skateboarder Marks is shooting arrows through a lampshade in the hotel room. Templeton, who was manager of the team at the time, is responsible for all the costs and breakages. Yet Marks does not feel embarrassed at doing this in Templeton’s presence. When the young skateboarders are very rowdy
and rebellious, says Templeton, he takes them to deserted industrial areas, where they can break things and get rid of their destructive energy.

But Templeton doesn’t just stand on the sidelines. He’s a professional skateboarder, with all the consequences of that profession. Self Portrait with Deanna at Hospital (1998) shows his wife Deanna crying when he has ended up in the hospital after a skateboard accident. Templeton doesn’t remember taking this photo, as he suffered amnesia as a result of the accident. Even when something happens to him, Templeton stays calm enough to document how it is affecting his loved ones.




Documenting a counterculture

Templeton’s photographic oeuvre is strongly documentary in character. The photos, often accompanied by short hand-written texts, form a visual diary. Through his camera, the viewer sees not only what happens, but also how Templeton feels about it. In his images, Templeton addresses universal emotions like fear, anxiety and awe. Through personal observations, Templeton succeeds in speaking for a whole generation.

He is thus associated with a larger group of artists who were working autobiographically in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and spotlighting unexposed communities and subcultures. Nan Goldin, the feminist artist who portrayed queer communities from the late ‘70s onwards, is particularly closely connected to Templeton’s work, and was a source of inspiration for him.

Templeton’s photos unlock the skateboarding culture. It is a rough counterculture, traditionally male dominated, which opposes the bourgeois culture of the suburbs. Templeton depicts the protagonists of this movement. He gives skateboarders a face, a story and many layers of emotion. In this way, they become profound characters, rather than just caricatures of unruly kids.

On the road

Travel plays a central role in this exhibition. We see the skateboarders in some of the most desolate and yet beautiful places in the United States. It’s a type of travel that is rarely done now - with the emergence of GPS and internet - going somewhere without knowing what it’s like beforehand. Skateboard road trips in the ‘90s and ‘00s were exploratory in nature, going to cities and literally driving around looking for something great to skate.

The concept of a road trip is closely connected to American culture. Modern classics like Kerouac’s On the Road, as well as films like Wim Wender’s Paris, Texas, Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider are seen as important milestones in American culture. They all celebrate America as the land of freedom, while at the same time exploring the loneliness and lawlessness of the country and criticizing Americas’ conservative religious underpinnings. They are stark fairy tales.

Templeton’s work, too, can be seen as an ode to the US and its amazing hinterland. The photos are imbued with a certain romanticism about a nomadic existence and about the poetry of being young, poor and unattached. The skateboarders are searching for themselves and their place in life, in the most spectacular locations.

Violence

Although Templeton’s gaze is affectionate, the images are often violent. The skateboard culture is a hard world, in which a big role is played by machismo. Many photos seem to be about deliberately seeking out feelings like pain, fear, anger and exhaustion.

For instance, there are various confrontations between skateboarders and the police or security. In one series of photos taken in nearby Heerlen, a young skater boy is physically assaulted by a businessman. Templeton combines these violent photos with serene images of the skateboarders peacefully smoking a cigarette or playing guitar on a bed. This contrast highlights the violence even more, while also showing that it is only one part of the skateboarder’s existence.

The brutality of skateboarding is shown in the Injury Cluster: a big collection of wounds and injuries photographed by Templeton over the years. The lifestyle involves a lot of risk and potential bodily damage, and those who want try skateboarding will have to come to grips with falling down. These photographs illustrate this damage, but they also speak to the determination and pride in overcoming these challenges. These bruises and wounds are displayed by skaters with an air of pride. These images demonstrate clearly how pain is glamourised in the skateboard culture.

Particularly in the ‘90s and ‘00s, the skateboard world glorified an oppressive concept of masculinity that involved physical power and mental indifference. Macho and misogynist remarks were not uncommon. This is clearly reflected in many of the photos. Men are the main characters, while women are adoring passers-by. Ed Templeton has been trying to change this culture of toxic masculinity for a long time. One of the main characters in his work, of course, is his wife Deanna. He was also one of the first to sponsor and turn pro a female skateboarder, Elissa Steamer, one of the trailblazers of female skateboarding. Her style and video parts have inspired a generation of girls to take up skateboarding as well.

Collage

In the display cases, Templeton has brought together a variety of tangible memories. It gives a good idea of the times: single polaroids lie alongside newspaper cuttings and letters from fans. Jokes, broken bones, arguments, sex, they’re all mixed up together, just as they would have been connected in real life. Templeton shows all the aspects of his life, in a lively portrait of an era of confusing years, where joy, sadness, excitement and fear all lay close together.

Templeton often works in a collage-like style. All the photos in this exhibition, and not just those in the display cases, are arranged so that their combination tells a bigger story. For this exhibition, Templeton uses his archive as a mine from which he extracts his material. By juxtaposing old and new, affectionate and violent, lonely and convivial photos, Templeton’s work continues to have new meaning. In addition, the passage of time, the changing world and new knowledge shed new light on the photos for both the artist and the visitor. The most important thing is the total view of the exhibition and the impression you eventually take home with you from the museum.

Portraiture

A special feature of Templeton’s work is that he often adapts his photos after printing them. He paints them in bright colours and adds extra lines or hand-written texts, giving the photos an extra layer. They gain context and rise above the documentary. Creating vivid backgrounds makes the figures in the foreground stand out. You feel the sun dancing. The painted photos become a bit flatter, and attention is drawn to the subject while the rest is painted out. Templeton thus places extra focus on his work.

These adaptations also form a nice connection with Templeton’s paintings, which are mainly portraits that are quiet, yet full of life. In a style rather reminiscent of David Hockney, Templeton plays with perspective and colour. His portraits are affectionate, yet they too have a raw edge of social activism. He doesn’t make anything more beautiful than it is, but finds beauty in the unusual.

In both media, Templeton’s great strength lies in the fact that he is incredibly good at recording who people really are. He sees through them. A good example of this is Brian Anderson after big contest (1999). Anderson, who has just become the world champion skateboarder for the second time in a row, is sitting in a window seat gazing outside, while he smokes a cigarette. Templeton thinks it’s wonderful to see Anderson’s relief. After all the excitement, screaming fans and interviews, he now gets a moment to himself at last and can reflect on his victory. Today, says Templeton, this photo has gained even more significance. Not only did Anderson suffer from alcoholism, but he was actually a closet homosexual. The knowledge that he couldn’t be himself in his macho skate community, and that he must have endured great inner turmoil, lends an extra layer of intensity to this portrait.