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Remembering Hugh Holland
13 February 2025
Hugh Holland, whose photographs defined the golden era of skateboarding in Los Angeles, has died. He was 82.
Holland developed an interest in photography in his twenties when he was living in his native state of Oklahoma. His only exposure to the medium had been a college job in a photo lab.
Returning from a trip to Spain in 1968 to West Hollywood where he would become a wood finisher, he decided to seriously pursue photography. He built a darkroom and starting shooting everything in sight.
One afternoon in 1975, he was driving up Laurel Canyon Blvd. when he saw skateboarders carving up drainage ditches on the side of the canyon. For the next three years, he documented the skateboarders, shooting with repackaged color negative movie film.
His Angels series was first shown locally at M+B Gallery in early 2006 before going on tour internationally in London, Paris and New York, with exhibitions planned for Sydney and the Pera Museum is Istanbul. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, NPR and the Los Angeles Times.
In 2010, his monograph Locals Only by AMMO Books was published in conjunction with his second exhibition and in 2011, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles included his work in the first major U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art in a group exhibition entitled Art in the Streets.