Atiba Jefferson: Skate Photography

Nearly three decades of skateboarding photography from the sport's foremost documentarian

Atiba Jefferson's image-making practice has come to define nearly 30 years of street, editorial and commercial skate photography, expressing a unique mode of spectatorship that engages with skateboarding not just as a sport but in tribute to its global vitality as a cultural movement. This publication--the first book to explore Jefferson's body of work--presents highlights from his extensive archive which follows the careers of three generations of the world's most accomplished skaters and is supplemented by never-published works, contact sheets, undeveloped film negatives and personal photography. Atiba Jefferson was born in Colorado Springs in 1976 before moving to Los Angeles in 1995, where he resides today. In addition to his 25-plus years of documenting skateboarding culture, he is deeply embedded in the world of basketball and worked as the staff photographer for the Los Angeles Lakers during the team's heyday of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal.