Artist Series 015 | Grant Brittain

Words and portraits by Edwin Negado. Presented in conjunction with LANDLINE — a solo exhibition featuring images taken in San Diego between 1990 and 1999 by J. Grant Brittain. On view from August 17 to November 16, 2025, at Coffee & Tea Collective art space.

 

Coming out of the vert-heavy ’80s, San Diego skateboarding, like many other places, took a hit. For San Diego, the general interest in skateboarding was in a lull, and when combined with rising insurance costs, skateparks across the city were forced to shut down operations one by one. As the 90s came around, street skating emerged, and skaters like Gonz, Natas, and Matt Hensley were transforming schoolyards, curb cuts, and downtown areas into new backdrops for the once again counterculture of skateboarding.

This shift also changed how photographers documented it. Grant, who had captured some of the most iconic vert images, had to adjust to this new type of skateboarding and built a new body of work along ledges, handrails, stair sets, and curb cuts. This rough style became the look of the era and still influences how we see skateboarding today.

>> Conversation excerpt:

>> Grant Brittain & Edwin Negado

 

[E] You were born in Fallbrook and now live in Encinitas. Have you ever lived anywhere else?

[G] Just Cardiff, Solana Beach, Leucadia, and Encinitas. I even slept on a pool table at Del Mar Skate Ranch for eight months.

[E] You said you worked at the Ranch for 6 years?

[G] Yeah, from around ’78 to ’84. They were open for nine years, closing in ’87. I started at TransWorld Magazine in ’83 and wasn’t paid at first, got $200 a month starting in ’84, which wasn’t much but better than nothing.

[E] Are there any remnants of the old Del Mar Skate Ranch left?

[G] No, they dug it all up around 2015. They uncovered the old slalom banks when demoing something else and had to pull out the concrete. It was a giant bank slalom but chopped off about four feet from the bottom. I posted some clips from that on social media a few days ago. A friend made me a bottle opener out of a piece of rebar from Del Mar for my birthday.

I graduated from Fallbrook High in 1973. I started surfing at 14 and lived in Fallbrook, where none of my friends even had cars. We would hitchhike through Bonsall, make friends with older surfers, and get rides. Then I got my license. Back then, you could drive from Fallbrook to Oceanside without hitting a single traffic light — crazy, right? Eventually, we started going to Swamis and other spots down here, and that’s when I decided to move to the beach when I graduated.

When I moved from Fallbrook, I moved to Cardiff. I lived there on and off from 1974 to 1986. It was about a five-minute drive to the beach, but I could also walk down to the water from my house on Dublin Drive, just up from Cardiff Reef. I’d either smoke pot and make art or go surfing.

I was drawing before I got into photography — painting, easel art — and I was an art major. I got rid of most of my drawings later, realizing when I got into photography that I wasn’t that great an artist. I was a good doodler, though, and I thought about going into cartooning because I liked artists like Rick Griffin and the Zap comics.

[E] RayGun Magazine. Did you ever work there?

[G] I didn’t work directly for RayGun, but I knew David Carson when he was their Art Director. He later worked at Surfer and Quiksilver. He changed graphic design — broke the Swiss grid rules, made things illegible, and influenced a lot of young designers trying to copy his style. During his time at TransWorld, I had to educate him a bit. He’d run spreads with tiny photos and giant type, which skaters didn’t like. I was the photo editor, so I looked out for the photographers and readers. Neil, Lance Mountain, Bryan Ridgeway, Marty Jimenez, and Britt Parrott — those skaters weren’t into his style either.

There was one fight where we argued over layouts. I remember telling him he couldn’t run certain photos like that because the skaters would hate it. But he made the magazine look professional. Eventually, he left, and the magazine’s design changed.

[E] How did working with David Carson influence your photography?

[G] David got me to think more graphically — shooting with spreads in mind, leaving space for type, shooting action on one side and another element on the other. I started shooting more minimalist, cutting out ugly backgrounds to make photos work with big type.

One iconic cover we did was with no type at all — just the skater pushing on the ground. It caused a huge fight, but it was groundbreaking. Half the staff hated it, but it loosened things up in skateboarding design when it came out. Skateboarding photography is about capturing the feeling of freedom, the movement from point A to B.

[E] Have you ever had a shoot where nothing looked good?

[G] All the time. Shooting film, you never know if you got the shot until later. Sometimes I’d shoot the same thing three times before getting it right. The problem with social media is that there is such a high demand for content and the very good stuff gets overlooked, and it’s all so fleeting. Back in the day, some of this stuff would be covers of magazines.

[E] Where was skateboarding after the ’80s? How was the industry in the early ’90s, and how did that change the way you were documenting it?

[G] Out of the ’80s, it was all vert. Street skating came about through Natas, Gonz, Tommy Guerrero, Martinez, and others. When the skateparks shut down, people built ramps — the DIY aesthetic took over. In the ’90s, someone like Hensley came along with great style and could ride everything — ditches, rails, whatever. In the  ’80s,  there were nine skateparks in San Diego. Del Mar, Escondido, Spring Valley, Home Avenue, Oasis, El Cajon, and others. Del Mar was the last one until it closed in ’87.

[E] So when the  ’90s came around, how were you finding these skateboarders without as many skateparks to go to?

[G] You’d hear about them, a friend would tell you, or a company would ask me to shoot someone. In ’91 I had my daughter, so I stayed closer to home. San Diego was a hotbed for street skating, so I could just link up with people — guys like John Reeves (Invisible Skateboards was across the street from us), Jamie Thomas, Jason Carney, Dan Rogers. Then I’d meet their friends who were also good. Through shoe companies like Osiris, I met more locals.

[E] Was the energy of skateboarding in the ’90s different from the ’80s?

[G] Totally different. In the ’90s, ledge tricks got more technical. Sequences became more important — people were doing combo tricks: trick up, trick on, trick off. You could shoot 20 rolls and they wouldn’t make it. I preferred stills over sequences unless they landed it.

[E] When did digital photography come into play?

[G] Around 1998. I think I was the second skate photographer to use digital. I shot on a Canon EOS-1D — maybe four megapixels, six frames per second. You could still run spreads from it.

[E] And with video, how did that change skate photography?

[G] It killed sequences. People didn’t want stills pulled from video, and by the time a magazine came out, the trick had already been seen online. Social media sped things up so much that the longevity and validation magazines gave were gone.

[E] How did medium format come into your skate photography?

[G] Atiba Jefferson started shooting with a Hasselblad, then everyone got one. I shot medium format back in the day too — like the black-and-white photo of Tony Hawk looking at the camera mid-air. That was on a Mamiya C3 twin-lens reflex. I told Tony to look at me on the next one, and he did.

[E] Looking back, how did the ’90s change skate photography?

[G] Tricks got too fast for stills, so we shot video and did frame-by-frame grabs. Quality wasn’t great, but it was the only way to capture them at the time.

[E] Are there photographers now who take a more artistic approach to skate photography?

[G] I’m not sure I’m the right judge. Tricks are bigger now, but the photography often looks the same — fisheye at the bottom of the rail. In the ’90s, some photographers made things look different. Mike Blabac is still one of the best. 

[E] Thank you for your time, Grant.

 

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