Documentary photography has always personally intrigued me as it is one of the only styles of photography that captures real-time events in a candid and raw way. It is a style of photography that allows us, as an audience to gain insight into a realm some may be foreign to such as Skateboarding, somewhat giving us a backstage pass into the lives of others. Skateboarding as a subculture has always been rather exclusive to the outside world and photographers that try to infiltrate the world of Skateboarding somehow always butcher and misrepresent skaters. As a skater myself, I have seen big corporations such as Zumies exploit his precious lifestyle skating has to offer for their own profit or gain. And as skating continues to become a more relevant part of youth culture, more creatives (photographers, directors etc) want to enter and document this realm – some with good intentions, others without.
For this Mimesis project, I aim to capture the essence of documentary photography in hopes to somewhat replicate the feelings of happiness I feel when looking at Noa’s photography.
However, ‘NOW’ by Noa Oka features a first-hand coverage of an important subculture in Melbourne. The Zine is a documentation of DNL crew, standing for Did Not Land (a jab at skaters aversion to posting tricks they have failed), an all-female skateboarding crew which aims to carve themselves a piece of the Melbourne streetscape. While it predominantly features work focused on the ins-and-outs of Melbournes emerging female skate scene, Noa also includes images that evidence the lifestyle and culture of the crew and its members.
‘NOW’ is an A5 size zine taking on a documentary style photography which has a strong influence taken from street photography.
The zine is important because it serves a purpose of recording the early stages of DNL, a youth culture which disregards the subtle social norms which administer the patriarchy and gender inequalities. While DNL is predominantly a social and supportive collective, by participating in the crew the women involved are changing the culture of skateboarding, actively creating a discourse from media representations of the skaters and reclaiming their place in public streets.
The world of skateboarding is often seen as an exclusive culture which is often misrepresented in the media. When analysing the contrast between external media representations and internal mediated representations of the skater subculture, it becomes apparent that it has generated a stigmatisation in the dominant culture. The media has created a narrative that has caused this subculture to be a ‘problematic group’ in the eyes of the dominant culture. This has led to the skaters often being discredited by the wider media culture, leading to skaters being stereotypes and stigmatised because of this lack of credibility and overall respect.
However, Noa’s zine breaks this cycle of misrepresentation as it positively depicts the crew in a light that shows their bond not only as individuals that skate together but as a family. This is an element of documentary style that I aim to implement in my own approach with projects throughout this course. Being able to truly capture raw emotions in real time through the lens of a camera, will, in turn, allow the work I produce to be an honest insight into the realm of the topic of exploration
