Ed Templeton is known for his interdisciplinary practice, most notably of photographs documenting people and street life of Huntington Beach, California, intimate portraits of his wife, and paintings depicting the psychological complexity of American suburbia. He first gained recognition as a teenage skateboard prodigy in the late 1980s and learned to photograph using disposable cameras while actively touring for competitions. He later expanded to incorporate his artwork and graphics for his skate company Toy Machine.
Templeton uses photography, archival materials, painting, and drawing to explore the ugliness, banality, and beauty of the familiar everyday world, oftentimes attaching a deep, subjective emotional expression to his portraits. As the artist explains, all of his subjects come from his own life: “Everything I’ve ever shot has just been on the path that I’ve been on, be it skating or travel or street photography.” The environmental scenes created by Templeton are as much within the genre of portraiture as they are landscapes, neatly framing and supporting our perceptions of the bodily movements, ambiguities, and our relations with the characters embodied within.
