Revisiting the birth of skate culture in 1970s Los Angeles

New photobook ‘Last Days of Summer: California Skateboarding Archive 1975–1978’ looks back at an iconic chapter of youth culture.

Back in 1974, a squad of local surfers hailing from the gritty beaches of Dogtown, Los Angeles, picked up skateboards and started riding concrete waves. The Zephyr Surf Team, better known as the Z-Boys, turned backyard pools into skate parks and drainage ditches into half pipes, inventing a brand new sport that inspired a legion of local youth to follow suit.

One day during the summer of ’75, Hugh Holland spotted a curious sight while driving through the city’s Laurel Canyon: a teen skater flying straight up in the air. Holland, who had just taken up photography, decided to check it out — and soon found himself in league with a crew of skaters he called “The Wild Boys.”

Over the next three years, Holland followed the Southern California skate scene, photographing across Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, Venice Beach and traveling to San Francisco and Baja California, to craft a hypnotic chronicle of the underground sport during its formative years.

Now Holland looks back at this iconic chapter of youth culture in Last Days of Summer: California Skateboarding Archive 1975–1978 (Chronicle Chroma). The oversize book unfolds like scenes from a dream where nothing else exists but the quest for the perfect skate. Few could have imagined that half a century later, skateboarding would debut at the Paris Olympics.

Holland’s work stands at the nexus of sport, street, documentary, portrait, and fashion photography, effortlessly blending genres to mesmerising effect all while helping to preserve a groundbreaking moment in LA history.

“As over-photographed as Los Angeles is known to be in pop-culture, there has been something we have been missing here,” says Steve Crist, Publishing Director of Chronicle Chroma. “Because of our car culture, large distances and general lack of pedestrians, Los Angeles didn’t really have many serious street photographers to document our time here. Hugh is one of the very few photographers that dedicated himself to the street and youth culture in California.”

Envisioned as Holland’s masterwork on the era, Last Days of Summer brings together classic and never-before-seen colour photographs that bring us back to a time when kids roamed free, inventing a sport and culture built on the elements of style.

Rounding out the book are the voices the skaters themselves, including Danny Kwock, Ed Templeton, and Solo Scott, their stories woven together into a panoramic portrait of the times by Nick Owchar, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, and an essay by Shepard Fairey.

Holland spoke of his love for Henri Cartier-Bresson, the consummate street photographer, and a shared passion for the decisive moment as it unfolds on the world stage. Whether snapping the teens in action, in a shared scene of camaraderie or a quiet moment of repose, Holland distills the hope, promise, and radical imagination of youth culture at its best.

“Hugh’s body of work is a time capsule, and he captured a time that will not come again,” Crist says. “They appeared to feel free, as if they had a special community that was ruled only by kids and skateboards.”