In the mail from Amazon yesterday: Fuck You Heroes: Glen E. Friedman Photographs 1976-1991

Some background on Glen Friedman from Wikipedia:

Friedman's childhood was largely spent skating in the legendary West L.A. schoolyards of the area called "DogTown." His friends were beginning to be featured in magazines, but Friedman felt the images failed to capture skating's true essence. Though still in junior high school, he thought he could do better.

In the fall of 1976, Friedman discovered an empty pool, and corralled a few friends into riding it so he could take pictures. He showed the results to a freelance SkateBoarder writer he met at the local schoolyard, who put the eighth-grader in touch with editor. SkateBoarder published the first photos Glen ever submitted as a full-page subscription ad. He soon after became the magazine's youngest staff member.

Several years later Friedman began to shoot the punk shows he was attending. Glen was passionately loyal to his subjects, and relentlessly devoted to winning them exposure. Proto-punks such as Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, and others received some of their first national and international media documentation through Friedman's work.

I spent a few hours thumbing through the book last night, looking at each picture again and again. What Friedman captured in his photographs is more than just action, more than just people on a stage. He does with the camera what I always wanted to do.

I consider photography a challenge - to get the camera lens to see something the way my eye sees it, to transfer what my world looks like in a split moment to an image where that world is conveyed so everyone else can see it. I take hundreds of photos a week; the actual number of times that what I try to accomplish actually happens is miniscule.

That's why I spent so much time looking at Friedman's photos. He nails it every time. He is a master at capturing atmosphere. With the skateboard pictures from the '70s, Friedman might not have even realized then what he was capturing. The shots of shirtless skaters in shorts and knee socks, no helmets, no logos, hair flying, truly brings out the essence of what skateboarding was in those days.