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Words: Miki
Vukovich
Grant Brittain picked up a camera at the ripe old age of 25 and started
shooting his friends skateboarding at the Del Mar Skate Ranch. The
"Ranch" was a skatepark in a small beach town north of San Diego,
California that he managed in the early 1980s, and it was there that he
honed his photographic skills. After blowing massive amounts of film,
he took every photo class Palomar Junior College had to offer. And with
that, he felt he finally learned how to manipulate his 35mm camera.
While at college, an influential instructor introduced Brittain to the
vast world of photography, and set him on his creative path. In 1983,
Grant was asked to contribute skate photos to the premiere issue of
TransWorld SKATEboarding magazine and became its founding Photo Editor
and Senior Photographer.
Over the past twenty years, Brittain has helped TransWorld grow into
the most popular skate mag in the world, and has captured the best
skateboarders of the last two decades in photos that have become
classics. He has also taught some of the best skate photographers, past
and present, and helped them develop their own work. He hopes that they
have gotten as much inspiration from him as he gets from them.
Over the years Brittain's personal work – abstracts, portraits,
landscapes and travel images-seems to draw from the opposite energy of
his action images. His "off hours" are consumed by a search for calmer
and more serene subjects. Still lakes at night and solitary desert
forms are among the subjects of his diverse personal work. Some of his
portraits of well-known athletes even manage to divulge a more
reflective side of their personalities.
Few photographers have pursued so wide a range of subjects and styles.
But few individuals find themselves so central to such an active
community, where one's perspective is just a notch askew of the rest,
and where movement and progression is the norm.
Grant Brittain's body of work reflects his deep involvement in an
emerging youth culture, as well as his escape from it.
Grant and a group of
the skateboarding elite talent left TWS and started The Skateboard Mag,
check it at theskateboardmag.com
and at shops and newsstands.
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