Ed Templeton: Wires Crossed

Part memoir, part document of the DIY, punk-infused subculture of skateboarding as it came of age in the 1990s and early 2000s, Ed Templeton’s Wires Crossed pulses with the raw, combustive energy of Templeton’s image-making from the last twenty-plus years. Illustrated by photographs, collages, texts, maps, and other ephemera from Templeton’s journals, Wires Crossed offers an insider’s look at a subculture in the making and reflects the unique aesthetic stamp that sprang from the skate world he helped create. Templeton occupies the rare position of having been a professional skateboarder, a two-time World Skateboarding champion, as well as a photographer and artist working within the skateboard community as it gained increasing cultural currency in the 1990s and beyond. His work first gained recognition as part of the Beautiful Losers collective loosely gathered around Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. This work, much of it previously unpublished and unseen, explores Templeton’s own journey as an image maker, as well as the lives of professional skateboarders as they spent long hours crisscrossing the world on tour, reveling in their newfound status as rock star–like figures and the eternal search for new terrain to skate. Interviews between Templeton and fellow pro-skaters and friends add compelling detail about the pressures and pleasures of life on the road, and what it’s like to obsessively pursue an art form—whether on their decks or behind the camera.

Ed Templeton: Wires Crossed was made possible, in part, with generous support from RVCA / Artist Network Program.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 264
Number of images: 278
Publication date: 2023-05-23
Measurements: 8.6 x 11 x 1.25 inches
ISBN: 9781597115360

“His book might be as powerful a record of skate life—it’s wayward youth and lust for the road—as has ever been made”—Alessandro Merola, Dazed

“Templeton’s book is unsparing but nonjudgmental. The damage accumulates slowly, as what seems at first like youthful fun grows more uneasy.”—Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker

“Aperture’s Ed Templeton: Wires Crossed speaks eloquently about loss and joy and oblivion, the stature and swagger of youth, and its link to the 40-mile stare of middle age.”—Johan Kugelberg, Document Journal

 

Ed Templeton (born in Los Angeles, 1972) is a star skateboarder, entrepreneur, painter, and street photographer. He has published over twenty books of his photographs, not including the volumes of zines he has self-produced over the years. His work has been exhibited worldwide, including at Alleged Gallery, New York; Roberts and Tilton, Los Angeles; Modern Art, London; and Aki-X Gallery, Tokyo, and in solo museum exhibitions at Museum Het Domein, Netherlands, and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. He is considered part of the Beautiful Losers, a group of artists who, in the 1990s, defined the high-brow/low-brow mix of graffiti, skate culture, and art.
Brian Anderson is a Queens-based professional skateboarder. Anderson was named Thrasher magazine’s “Skater of the Year” in 1999, the same year he won the World Cup of Skateboarding title.
Erik Ellington is a professional skateboarder, designer, and entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. He is the founder of Human Recreational Services, a luxury footwear company.
Justin Regan is head of global brand and product marketing at Vans Skateboarding.
Elissa Steamer, one of the first women to become a professional skateboarder, is a four-time X Games gold medalist.
Deanna Templeton is a photographer based in Southern California. She has exhibited widely and published multiple books, including What She Said (2021).