<p>There is a scribble of asphalt and meandering ribbons of concrete tangled all over North America in a contiguous line of material that connects each of us to whomever else is also in contact. I sometimes marvel at this, walking from my front door and standing on the asphalt looking down at its grimy blackness, wishing I could rest my ear down on it and hear everything like the Indians in an old western film. The pavement I m standing on is connected to other pavement, concrete, or steel to almost anywhere I can think of. Certainly everywhere you can drive to. Someone in Burnt Church, Tennessee is standing on gravel that is connected by touch to my street, just like someone is in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I can be in New York City in 3 days from my home in the suburban sprawl of Orange County, California without ever touching the earth. The Seconds Pass... ...was the starting line of an old friend s poem. The line was the seconds pass / like hands thru glass. I always loved those lines. In my head I always replaced hands with eyes. It puts a name on those moments when you stare into space, lapsing into a daydream, and the world is just spinning by. Sometimes I step out of those moments, only a little, just enough to think in my head those words the seconds pass. Like an inner tick-tock, taking note that everything is slipping away, especially time. In America the automobile is omnipresent, and in Southern California cars are life-blood. You are always in a car here. I came to driving late, not getting my license until I was 18. Before that I had my girlfriend, Deanna to chauffeur me around. As a young skateboarder, I used cars to explore every last tendril of road I could find in search of skate spots and experienced much of my adolescent sex-life and adventures inside of a car. I like when I hear someone on the television call a busy street a major artery, like the roads are veins bringing life to the far reaches, with most of humanity lurking within reach of that life-giving connectivity. The tips of your toes are Fairbanks, the capillaries the Dalton Highway. For the preceding 22 years I have been a passenger all over the world, shooting pictures through the glass at those ephemeral winks, those trifles and curios that one races past, never enough time to stop. And what better social study is there than driving and looking? It s like taking a core sample from the social fabric, each layer exposing a new understanding of truth. My drive to Los Angeles takes me through streets lined with strip malls anchored with liquor stores and bail bond sellers, Colt 45 billboard sails, and 99-cent stores with brighter-than-daylight fluorescent lighting. Five minutes later I am passing high-end hipster sneaker shops and women in short dresses flittering about with a payload of shopping bags. A group of bearded Jewish men huddle on a corner in black suits and hats. You can look through the window right next to you at a person immersed in the enclosed world of their car, and secretly watch them live, rock out to music, talk on the phone, put on make-up or sit at a red light with thoughts elsewhere. The way people act depending on their various trips as they walk down the sidewalk or wait at a bench. The continuous remorseless traffic - each car bound for some purpose, going somewhere for some reason, all day long 24 hours a day in every city of the world. The section of street you happen to be on, the block, the intersection is a microcosm for all of humanity. All of this just rolls out perpetually in front you as you roll by the man-made scenery, colors, words, all coming into focus then fading back onto the horizon.</p>

The Seconds Pass

Arts & Photography

Ed Templeton

Photography & Video

Seems

...Today in the Flickr generation, photographs of young kids in wild and rebellious situations come a dime a dozen. The internet is chocked full of these images, usually shot and shared between small groups of friends and existing on a myriad of random Tumblr and Facebook pages. Never before in history have we lived in a society where the personal documentation of peoples private lives has been so public. However, when Ed Templeton began shooting these photos of young people kissing this was not the case at all. The worldwide web was only in its infancy and the word blog had not yet even been invented. Photography of this nature was restricted to few practitioners, and existed in a rarified world young fans and art aficionados. It should be noted that while in today s climate these images may feel standard, at the time they were being created Templeton was surely an innovator. His images spread through youth culture like wildfire, and in many ways one could blame the young photo-blog explosion partly on the fact that he took these photographs when he did. For that reason alone, Teenage Kissers should be viewed as a historical volume. As we look at these photographs of young people exchanging awkward kisses we are reminded again of that wonderful uncomfortability that comes with the discovery of young sexuality. Not only do we all remember the feeling of that first clumsy teenage kiss, as mature viewers we can now look at the photos from afar and understand exactly where it s all going. Like its predecessor, Teenage Kissers is a perfect documentation of this feeling. The photographs are, in many ways, beyond innocence. They brim with humanity in its most raw form and remind us that although some of us have now grown up, we re still never so far from that first kiss. The basics of our sexual lives are reflected back to us in these images...and no matter how many times we see it, it cannot be denied that there s a little Teenage Kisser in every one of us. - Aaron Rose

Teenage Kissers

Hairdos of Defiance

DEADBEAT CLUB

<p>The images in Ed Templeton: 87 Drawings cover a span of over thirty years, from 1990 to 2021, and deliver a remarkable retrospective of the artist’s intimate drawing style. Templeton examines the studied ennui of adolescents and young adults, capturing his subjects’ specific personalities while documenting the visual identity born of the distinctive skating and surfing culture that originated in Southern California. He knows this culture well, growing up there before becoming a professional (and World Champion) skateboarder, contemporary artist, and photographer. His subjects are often drawn as portraits, their faces shown with a striking detail that contrasts with the simple lines of their bodies. Though they project a cool indifference, they are celebrated by the artist, whose fondness for them both recognizes and commends their subversive style. As Kim Hastreiter notes in the preface, his “secret ingredient is empathy.” The collection also includes more personal drawings. There are eight of his wife and collaborator, Deanna; a self-portrait; and a drawing of them together. Fourteen of the drawings are on vintage hotel stationery, further anchoring the drawings in place, if not time. His grandfather collected much of the stationery; Templeton’s use of it adds a connective thread to both Southern California culture and his own life. Raised by his grandparents, Templeton credits his grandmother with exposing him to the art that would “enrich his life immensely,” and closes the book with a portrait of her at the end of her life. 87 Drawings is printed on natural textured art paper, and bound in cloth with a tipped-in reproduction and original silkscreen design by the artist. The first printing is limited to 2,000 copies.</p>

Ed Templeton: 87 Drawings

Nazraeli Press

Drinking the Kool-Aid

Morel Books

Teenage Smokers 2

SUPER LABO

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Books by Ed Templeton