In the 1970s, photographer Hugh Holland masterfully captured the burgeoning culture of skateboarding against a sometimes harsh but always sunny Southern California landscape.
This never-before-published collection showcases his black-and-white photographs that document young skateboarders sidewalk surfing off Mulholland Drive in concrete drainage ditches and empty swimming pools in a drought-ridden Southern California. From suburban backyard haunts to the asphalt streets that connected them, this was the place that inspired the legendary Dogtown and Z-Boys skateboarders.
With their requisite bleached-blond hair, tanned bodies, tube socks, and Vans, these young outsiders evoke the sometimes reckless but always exhilarating origins of skateboarding lifestyle and culture.
“The gorgeous black-and-white photos collected in Holland’s Silver. Skate. Seventies., just published by Chronicle Chroma, capture the long summer evening of skateboarding’s adolescence, a momentary sense of freedom from gravity, just before it rocketed into the cultural stratosphere.”
—Los Angeles Magazine