Rediscovered Photos From the 1970's Hollywood Skate Scene
Photographer Hugh Holland was in the right place at the right time, he says. That place was LA and the time was 1975. "Skateboarding was happening in many places, but not like in California," he says over the phone from LA, where he still lives at 74. "To me, it seemed like this was the center of everything." Hugh's photos of long-haired, golden-skinned kids gunning down Hollywood's hills and tearing up its boulevards document the very origins of skate culture.
Over the course of three years, Holland took thousands of photos of the scene as it changed from an unruly after-school activity to a professional sport, complete with competitions, endorsement deals, and helmets. Glowing with late-afternoon California light, the images sat unsorted in boxes at his house for decades. But earlier this month, they went on show at Blender Gallery in Sydney (Hugh: "So many of these Australian surfers looked just like the kids in my pictures!"). And Hugh is still sifting through his crates.