Hugh Holland’s Silver, Skate, Seventies – The Eye of Photography

On a late afternoon in 1975, a young American photographer named Hugh Holland drove up Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles and encountered skateboarders carving up the drainage ditches along the side of the canyon. Southern California was experiencing a major drought. Emptied suburban swimming pools became evaporated playgrounds for kids with wheels—kick-starting an explosive skateboarding scene. “It spread like wildfire all over Southern California,” says photographer Hugh Holland. “I know it happened in other parts of the world too, but California felt like the center of it all.”