“I'm often asking myself, 'Will taking this photo get me beaten up?” says Ed Templeton on his method of taking strangers' pictures by stealth. “I prefer to make a photo without asking because I don't want a pose or a smile. I'm constantly picking and choosing my battles.”
This kind of dedication is simply the norm for the Huntington Beach native, and explains why he is widely regarded as a trailblazer in both skateboarding – as a pioneering pro rider and owner of game-changing company Toy Machine – and photography. Taking up the latter seriously in 1994 as a 22-year-old, with the aim of documenting the skate subculture in which he was embedded, Templeton’s seminal 2000 collection Teenager Smokers brought him to the wider attention of the art world, influencing a whole generation of photographers such as Ryan McGinley, and fellow skater and Leica aficionado Jerry Hsu.
In 2008, he published his acclaimed, 11-year-long project Deformer, which documented his formative years in “the incubator of suburban outskirts” that is Orange County, California, leading to a collaboration with Beginners director Mike Mills on an impressionistic short film of the same name. His latest series, Wayward Cognitions ("another way of saying 'stray thoughts'"), published by Thomas Campbell's Um Yeah Arts, dispenses with his usual thematic approach, and features "strangers on the streets, skaters, my wife, my friends" amassed over a period of 20 years from Templeton's extensive travels. Here the self-confessed "control freak" takes time out from finishing his book to discuss voyeurism and David Hockney.
You’ve said before that you’ve always felt like a voyeur looking in at the world. Did skateboarding help you to feel like you belonged to something?
Ed Templeton: Skateboarding at least pulled me into 'a' world. But even as a pro skateboarder I have always felt like an outsider, even while being the definition of an insider to that world. Part of this I think came from not being a big partier. I never drank or smoked, but the culture I'm in is big into weed and beer. So I was always sitting around watching people party. I have enjoyed 'belonging,' but as a photographer who was looking to document my particular milieu, I have often found myself having to make the choice between participating and stepping back to shoot various episodes. As I walk around I'm trying to see the world as it translates into a photograph, so the people-watching is still something that keeps my mind just outside of myself a bit.
How’s the leg? Are you able to skate much at the moment?
ET: The leg is as good as it's gonna get. I shattered it a year-and-a-half-ago now, and it has really slowed me down on the skateboarding front. I skate here and there with my friends, just small sessions. There's a big gap now between what I would do and what I can do. That’s a new feeling for me. But at 41, this was inevitable, and I'm not even sure what is from the injury and what is from being old. I was already transitioning into my next phase of life where I just make paintings, shoot photos and do Toy Machine; the leg break just hastened it a bit.
Can you name a few photographers who have left their mark on you over the years?
ET: I like all the classic street photographers: Winogrand, Frank, Erwitt, Koudelka, Goldberg, Cartier-Bresson and their ilk. But I also really love Peter Beard and David Hockney's photos, even later Robert Frank. They approached photography in a more ‘artsy’ way.
You're a book collector as well as a bookmaker. What do you find compelling in the form?
ET: I just love being around books. John Waters said, “If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!” I don't go home with lots of people, but if people don't have books I find them highly suspect! I like being able to reference the artwork of artists I like; I want to read the essays and interviews. The book is the ideal form for viewing photography, there is a chosen sequence and the viewer leads themselves through your story that you built through images. I love it.