Tino Razo and his friends used online maps to locate abandoned or semi-abandoned swimming pools. They’d hop in the car, armed with mops and buckets, and wash away the mud, the leaves, the garbage, the detritus that collects in forgotten quarters. And then they’d skate the pool.
Razo began documenting these skate-board sessions almost immediately, but pool culture, like so much of the Southern California cityscape, is disappearing. Here hope mingles with despair; here we see what it is to discover a spot and execute complex tricks in a fresh space. Each location had a time limit. It was only a matter of time before the cops showed.
After 18 years of skating New York City, Razo came to Los Angeles. It was a tough transition— “LA is not made for hangovers like NYC is.” Razo skated the backyard pool scene with East Coast expats like himself, shredding pools nicknamed Gonzo and Dead Dog.
Party in the Back juxtaposes renegade sessions by world class skateboarders with dramatic architectural photographs of a lost American dream. What was it to skate those pool sessions? “I would like to say it was the architecture or the missions or the views or trying to learn each new pool and how to skate it,” Razo writes. “But in reality it’s all of it. From scouring Google Earth; to finding spots by driving around looking for yellow grass, boarded up windows, big dumpsters out front, fences around houses or whatever signs of abandonment one can find; to cleaning the pools; right down to skating them and cracking beers with the crew. This was my shrink, my therapy, my escape from myself.”
Tino Razo, Party in the Back
March 1 – 27, 2017
450 W 15th St Ground Floor
New York, NY 10011
http://www.themilkgallery.com/
Tino Razo, Party in the Back
Published by Anthology Editions
$40
http://anthology.net/
