‘There Ain't No Forgettin'’
Vivid photographs capture the possibilities and rebellions of modern youth
Reviewed by Wayne Alan Brenner, Fri., April 22, 2011
'There Ain't No Forgettin''
Domy Books, 913 E. Cesar Chavez
Through April 28
The kids are all, right?
Baby-faced philosopher kings unthroned and idly courting the stages beyond adolescence, tattooed renegades carving the
dull suburban firmament with two pairs of wheels and a flexible board, rebellious little punks wearing detachment like a second skin and spitting in cancer's face with their pack-a-day habits.
Ed and Deanna Templeton capture this modern milieu habitually and professionally with their cameras, and the results – only some of the results, although there are many examples here, crowding the walls in Domy Books' generous gallery – are on display in this, their second two-person show.
Ed long ago made a name for himself in the skating world, starting the legendary Toy Machine Bloodsucking Skateboard Company after winning two world championships, relentlessly photographing and painting his concrete wastelands and their populations for almost two decades, and having been the subject of Mike Mills' 1996 documentary film Deformer and a part of the later Beautiful Losers doc.
Deanna, who's been plying the shutterbug trade for almost as long, has a new book (her third) out: Scratch My Name on Your Arm, a chronicle of "the phenomenon of the body autograph that is now prevalent among today's youth."
"There Ain't No Forgettin'" is a three-walled record of what else is prevalent among today's youth: the possibilities afforded to those still rubbery and not yet eroded by time's steady assault, all the exciting adult tropes of sex and drugs and relative personal freedom without the lackluster adult tropes of mortgages and prostate tests and deferred retirement annuities getting in the way.
Remember, geezer? Remember when you could do an ollie up the curb and not worry about needing a hip replacement if you wiped out? Remember when you and your first love went all the way on your roommate's futon, fumbling naked there beneath the Dead Kennedys poster and the shelf with the iridescent bong? Remember that night you got so drunk on Everclear that you decided you were gonna track down Tony Hawk and tell him what a fucking sellout he was? Remember?
At Domy Books right now, there ain't no forgettin'.
