arts ometimes you do something just again in somebody’s apartment in New circumstance and suburban kids’ boredom for you. You don’t care who sees it. York City, and “that’s how it got discovered and reckless disregard for the possibility of You don’t care what they think of really”. The summer of ‘05 saw Holland’s not getting it right. S it. All you care about is the thrill, shots in the windows of the LA label and Z-Boys opens with an excerpt from the rush, that moment – and what comes picked up by the LA gallery M+B. “It was Craig Stecyk’s Dogtown Articles: “Two- of it – gives you and you alone. There is a really big deal,” says Holland, who (still) hundred years of American technology something magical about not working to sounds slightly surprised. The ‘big deal’ had unwittingly created a massive cement any agenda, not even your own. Of having wasn’t so much the commercial recognition, playground of unlimited potential. But it no deadlines, of going wherever you are led. but more the fact that he’d been the only was the minds of 11-year-olds that could The boys (and girls) of Dogtown – in the one to capture what he had just assumed see that potential.” And Adams: “Once pool brief window from 1975 – were this way everybody else saw too. Almost all of the riding came in, y’know, that’s like all we inclined. They were a revolution of sorts, other pictures from that time have a harder wanted to do.” living in the moment, with no aspiration edge, a harsher light closer to the pages of “The style was incredible,” says Holland. beyond the then-and-there; on a permanent an extreme sports magazine. “Mine had a “That’s what brought me to it in the first summer vacation where Route 66 meets different kind of feeling to them.” place. I always say it’s like a ballet on its end, “that last seaside slum” where the These pictures are now the “of course” concrete. I came into (it) being totally days were long and they spent them doing that Holland opens most of his sentences fascinated with capturing the point where what most people thought was a waste of with; the “of course you want to interview the action reaches its peak.” time. What they did – He also caught the in- breaking into stranger’s between times, the static backyards to drain pools of those suburban days, and find their way into “Maybe I stopped because it was not “boys standing around ariels – was all they cared not doing anything, just about. They skated like interesting any more. Because I was waiting”. the greats surfed, they “But at the end, the rode the boards low and never into skateboarding. not at all.” reason I stopped was pushed – hard – against because I didn’t like what had been done before. “We didn’t me about those pictures”. “It was three photographing the company logos, you think there was any future in it … We were years – only three years – that I was shooting know.” He says this almost out of nowhere. doing it because we loved doing it,” says one the skateboarders.” From those years “Because they started wearing helmets in the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys. though, he’s done two books and counting, and knee pads and elbow pads with logos And, right there with them was Hugh exhibitions and campaigns and, still, there written on their shirts and all that stuff and Holland. The man with a “regular job barely are plenty more left in those boxes. “We’ve it was just … it was not the same.” making a living doing decorative painting” got thousands and thousands of good “It was the last year of the free spirit,” he who spent endless rolls of film and hours on pictures from that era. I was very prolific says of ’77. After that, skate parks were built these boys. He was so much part of the scene when I look back on it, I think wow, wow, “as fast as they could” and money was made. above Sidewalk Surfer Pit Stop, Huntington Beach (No. 70), 1975 Kenter Canyon, 1976. that in Lords of Dogtown you find the more how did I do so much?” After that, the boys in Holland’s pictures – than the occasional nod to him, lying on his When asked why it all ended in ’78, for him – stayed just that. The Peter Pans side at the edge of the emptied pool, propped he says, “Well, you go from one thing to of Venice Beach and beyond, held almost up on this elbow, camera at the ready. He another and I was … I got busy with work forever in boxes. One of Holland’s favourite shot Stacey Peralta – who went on to write or whatever.” shots – Down On The Corner – was taken Lords of Dogtown and direct and write The conversation strays to something on the way back from a contest at Balboa Dogtown – and Shogo Kubo, Wentzle Ruml, else and, eventually, Holland steers it Beach when he stopped off for another little IT Happened Jay Adams and all the others who would one back to the question of giving it all up. small contest. “I shot some pictures of the day soon wear the blue shirt of the legendary “Maybe I stopped because it was not contest but that wasn’t what was good. It Zephyr team. interesting any more. Because I was never was the kids in the street, outside the contest Thirty-seven years later, Holland talks into skateboarding. Not at all. And a lot – the kids in the street just hot-dogging. Years slowly, hovering over his words, choosing of people that interview me or talk to me later, someone was telling me, ‘do you know In Hollywood them carefully. He says he doesn’t know come on with the idea that I’m a skateboard who that is?’ and I said ‘nope’ and they said, which images we are using for the feature, but photographer. But I’m not. I don’t want to ‘that’s Danny Kwock’. Anyway, he became They were the golden years that can be described no other “can pretty much guess” even though they be a skateboard photographer, I’m not a a famous surfer later in the 80s and there – those pictures – weren’t really discovered skateboard photographer. BUT I’m happy in Newport Beach he was a legend.” Then, way than awesome – when the Cali kids had a style all of until 2005. They sat “for years and years in to be the one that did all these pictures.” though, and always in Holland’s lens, he is “boxes, many boxes”. “No one saw them These pictures are of the soft afternoon “just a kid on the street but WHAT STYLE. their own making and photographer Hugh Holland really,” he tells us, “not many people, not light, of the shadows stretching for the last Beautiful style.” When asked of the others, even me for a lot of the time.” They were part of the day. Boys with their arms high he says: “I don’t know what happened to was there, poolside, to capture it. just what he’d done; he didn’t think of them and knees bent near sitting on the asphalt them, a lot of them became pro – they got as “you know, fine art prints, book material of the road. Fixed gazes and breath drawn, logos and they designed boards and stuff – Words Elle Glass or anything really” until when exhibiting in leaning into the board. Holland pins the but anyway, that’s neither here nor there.” a small gallery of his then-hometown San “brief” years from 75 – when the pools It was the summer of ’75, those early Francisco in 2004, by chance, one of these marking the LA landscape were drained days, when Holland drove up Laurel Canyon skate images were among those he exhibited. by its responsible water-conscious citizens and first “saw these bodies flying out of this By circumstance, American Apparel’s Dov – as the finest. That was when vertical and ditch” from the corner of his eye. “I wasn’t Charney came across the shot, and then its “fantastic manoeuvres” was born of paying attention really, but it just caught me. 56 57 I got my camera and went over there and IMMEDIATELY they said, ‘Take a picture! Take my picture!’ they said ‘Get this! Take a picture of this!’ so, that started it all.” Holland used the Eastman film that was doing the rounds at the time, end lots from movies, for its “soft and warm tone”. He shot against the sun and cared only for composition. He reminds us that “back in the days of film, though, you couldn’t see what you were doing right away, you had to learn by trial and error and lots of film”. It was instant, a first-chance-only affair “because they were moving so fast”. “So I would set the camera at a high-enough shutter speed so I wouldn’t shake too much …” he runs through the technical considerations he should have taken into account “… A lot of times I didn’t really care. Never mind the lighting. That will take care of itself.” He laughs. “Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.” He admits this is half the reason the prints and the slides stayed in the box for as many years as they did – because he simply didn’t think they were any good – the kids didn’t want them if you couldn’t clearly see their faces.