City 01 Skate Days, 2017. Skatepark Monte Tossal (Castillo San Fernando). Alicante. Spain. Ollie & Skate

The skateboarders elaborate on the emotional, spiritual, physical and mental pleasures that accompany skateboarding. Of course, as skateboarder Jason suggests, much of the pleasure they describe is probably a result of the adrenaline that accompanies the type of risk taking that is typical of sporting culture generally and mediated depictions of skateboarding more particularly; clearly, these skateboarders are not fully rejecting physicality, risk taking, and bodily harm, all clear markers of dominant masculinity. As Alana Young and Christine Dallaire note, by taking pleasure in the type of risk taking associated with skateboarding, female skateboarders, for their part, challenge hegemonic femininity.

Despite the fact that skateboarding is inherently risky to some degree (and thus conventionally masculine), skateboarders’ reflective and passionate tones contradict dominant images of surly white male teens as well as notions that men are not and cannot be expressive, emotive or introspective. Furthermore, their discussions of stress and problems belie suggestions that young men are unable to reflect on or talk about what’s troubling them. Both the practice of skateboarding and skateboarders’ discussions of it provide skaters an opportunity to engage in a manner contradictory to dominant norms of masculinity, and, as their passionately stated descriptions reveal, they place a high value on this opportunity.

Quote. Emily Chivers Yochim. Skate Life. Re-Imagining White Masculinity, University of Michigan Press, 2010

City 00Skate days (CSKD) is a project of great scope on the world of skateboarding, raised from a vision that tries to go beyond its sporting side. I focus attention on aspects that reflect a subcultural model, very diverse moments and contexts, attitudes and signs that tell us about that experience: fashion, graffiti, gestures, local environments, lifestyles, group interaction, youth and contemporary identities. But it also opens up to other perspectives: the visibility and roles of women in the world of skateboarding, the relationship between skate and social integration based on community actions, the practice of skate in developing countries, the reinterpretation of urban culture from the expressiveness of very different local identities.

City 00Skate days (CSKD) es un proyecto fotográfico sobre el mundo del skate, planteado desde una visión que intenta ir más allá de su vertiente deportiva. Centro la atención en aspectos que reflejan un modelo subcultural, momentos y contextos muy diversos, actitudes y signos que nos hablan de esa vivencia: moda, graffiti, gestos, entornos locales, estilos de vida, interacción grupal, identidades juveniles. Pero también se abre a otras perspectivas: la visibilidad y roles de la mujer en el mundo del skate, la relación entre el skate y la integración social a partir de acciones comunitarias, la práctica del skate en países en vías de desarrollo, la reinterpretación de la cultura urbana desde la expresividad de muy diversas identidades locales.