Wednesday 13 August 2008

Skate or die!


© Magnus Andersson 2008

On Friday we'll be having a feature on skate parks in South London. The shot at the top is for the front page, but I've yet to see what going on inside on the double page spread. What follows is unrelated commentary.


© Magnus Andersson 2008

I used to skate as a kid in Sweden and I grew up on Thrasher Magazine and especially the photography of a guy simply called O. He was the don.


© Magnus Andersson 2008

Lots of fish eye photography, lots of natural light, long before flash photography started dominating the scene. I wish I could link to his home page here, but you try googling 'O' and 'skate' and 'photography' and see what you come up with.


© Magnus Andersson 2008

Add/subtract to that search 'legendary photographer', 'seminal' etc, but still nothing. Maybe 'O' died, who knows, but his images of saturated pool riding, hand plants, Christ air's etc in the Californian 80's sun is still very much in my mind. If you have the link, please post a comment.


© Magnus Andersson 2008

I seem to remember that he was a Nikon guy as well, maybe eventually a Nikon F4 shooter. Not quite sure why I remember this as it was way before I started shooting seriously myself, I was just happy to skate.


© Magnus Andersson 2008

My best friend Daniel and me used to rip it up in our home town and around 1987-88 nobody could touch us. Daniel was the master of the big ollie and I was the first one to land an ollie airwalk.


© Magnus Andersson 2008

We gave up when kids half our age landed the ollie kick flip more frequently than us, but we're still best friends today, dreaming back to our days of fluid movement.


© Magnus Andersson 2008

Come to South London, skate or die. I used to ride a Steve Caballero Powell & Peralta board just because he used to do the big air. Indy trucks with Rat Bones underneath.

Tony Hawk was just a wannabee at the time. I've still got a skateboard in my closet (literally) and I've used it only once to ride down the local supermarket in two years. I felt such a fool. Back in the day I would have called myself a poser. The same thing applies now. I can still do an ollie though. No, really, I can.


© Magnus Andersson 2008

2 comments:

Mattias Johansson said...

Tjena Magnus!

Schyssta bilder. Det där skatandet minns jag. Själv hade jag simms-bräda. Kryptonics för gatan och jag hade nog också ratbones, om jag inte minns fel, för rampåkning.
Ha det gött!

Magster said...

tackar!
ha ha, jo jag minns att jag hade roda kryptonics ett tag ocksa, snabba saker det. :) synd att man inte fortsatte, hade varit kul att aka igen, men det hade nog bara sett pinsamt ut...