Our “5000 Words” interview with photographer Atiba Jefferson expands upon some images he has recently taken on tour to accompany the launch of his “United Through Skateboarding” capsule for Vans. It was interesting hearing Atiba speak about each of these photos, to find out a little more about his Vans collection, and learn about some UK skate history that has impacted him…
Words and interview by Jacob Sawyer. Self portrait by Atiba Jefferson
Using the phrase needs no introduction in an introduction is an overused device, but Atiba Jefferson is a photographer whose legendary status and body of work in different fields make it entirely applicable. He has been on the other end of the lens for some of the most iconic moments in skateboarding history, and continues to be the go-to lensman when something out of the ordinary is on the cards. Needless to say, he has some more than memorable moments in the archives. When we originally began speaking about working on a photo feature, the main thing we were mindful of was the criteria that would enable him to whittle down some moments to speak about. For someone whose work has been consistently in print since the nineties, those parameters would need to be specific. That’s why when we heard that Atiba’s “United Through Skateboarding” launch schedule would include a gallery show in each major city, including London, the weight of the selection process was lifted. We opted to choose some of the Vans-related images he was soon to be on tour with to hear about the place they have in his heart, and where they factor into his story.
Not too long ago, Atiba was appointed brand curator for Vans, and they couldn’t have picked a better storyteller. His love of skateboarding and photography makes him a perfect ambassador with the deepest of connections to his subject matter. He recently shared his infectious passion for capturing skateboarding with a keen bunch of aspiring photographers in London on a whistle-stop tour organised to coincide with the launch of his Vans capsule. Hosting these workshops and passing down knowledge of the process that he has helped to define is a great way to perpetuate an ongoing respect for the craft and is a testament to the positive mindset he brings to our culture. We were honoured to help host the London leg of his schedule, and hyped to see the happy faces he coached.
Some of the pictures selected below were taken this year, some were shot way back at the beginning of Atiba’s journey, and one in particular was taken on his first ever Vans trip, an image which ties his collection together and truly represents the spirit of the brand. From shooting with Ban Kadow and Rowan Zorilla on the streets of London, to capturing Ray Barbee following a random meeting in 1998, or shooting Zion Wright a hundred stories above New York City, each photo has a story and represents different eras in the evolution of the waffle sole. Before he jetted off to Sean Malto’s wedding, Atiba took some time out to expand a little on each photo and his feelings for the epic humans in them, before answering a few specific questions about the Vans collection he brought to us. Enjoy these insights from a photographer who has spent over thirty years honing his skills, and is still just as excited about skateboarding, on either side of the lens, as when he first picked up a camera…
Ben Kadow – Backside 50-50
First and foremost, all of these photos I selected for a vibe, knowing they were going to be shown in each city. I’m glad you picked this one, especially as this is for Slam City Skates. This backside 50-50 of Ben [Kadow] wasn’t so much a big clip thing; it was just a cool photo. For us, visiting, there’s always something so special when we see your double decker buses. For me, that brings such a specific, British, London vibe. So I always love it when I can shoot a photo where you can instantly tell that it is not California.
Anthony Van Engelen – Pole Jam
There’s not a ton to speak about with this one. AVE is AVE, he’s always great to shoot with. I just remember this one being a really big pole jam, especially at that time. So it was great to shoot, but it was just a day out, and I can’t even remember how we ended up there. It ran as a Vans ad, the result of just going out skating with AVE back in the day. With this photo, for me, it’s always about how I can make the trick look the best, and I knew fisheye was the way to go. What I love the most about this photo is that you can really sense AVE’ s raw power, and speed; it seems like he’s shooting straight into space. At the point this was taken, we were all skating with Dylan Rieder (RIP) a lot too. We were all rolling together really hard, and it was a really fun time. Things seem so different now. On a sidenote, I get my Cadillac worked on right down the street from this spot, a Cadillac mechanic who Andrew Reynolds recommended to me.
Lizzie Armanto – Frontside Invert
I love this photo, and I love skating with Lizzie. This is from a day of shooting with her at Garvanza skate park. To be honest, with the lighting on this, one of my flashes misfired and created a really dynamic lighting that I absolutely love. I personally never skate bowls, it’s not my thing, but transition skating is just amazing. It’s so gnarly, so different from streetskating. It makes me feel like I’m watching a video game, and I just love it. Lizzie is really good at having that 80s energy with her stuff, and with this, like a lot of stuff that I do, you’re actually blown away when it all comes together. Lizzie is such a unique skater, she has such a smooth flowy style, she’s just the best.
Curren Caples – Frontside Lien
We did not know this spot existed when we traveled to Malaga. Funnily enough, I remember there being a lot of British people on holiday in Malaga; the airport was packed with Brits. Curren just fucking rips, he’s one of the best, and he did this so effortlessly. Only skaters know and can see how difficult that trick actually was for him to do in such a tight transition. I remember thinking at the time that this is a postcard. Where he did this, there are a number of sculptures that are very skateable. It is definitely one of the best natural transition spots I’ve been to, and it was amazing to have Curren there to skate it.
Ray Barbee
I think this is the first time that I ever met Ray, I don’t have many photos of him. Our paths didn’t cross much at all, which is a tragedy for me because he is one of the most influential skaters to me. He’s one of the first black skaters that I saw who looked like me, at a time when there weren’t many black skaters. He’s such a big inspiration to me, then also being a musician, and being an individual, he’s just the coolest. I really love that you can tell, as someone who doesn’t age, that it wasn’t taken just yesterday. It’s cross-processed, and it’s film; he’s a photographer and a big film dude, there’s so much to this photo that I really love. I remember it was a day when we were out skating somewhere, and I just ran into him; it wasn’t a planned photo.
Efron Danzig – Heelflip
I love skating with Efron; her energy is amazing, she’s just great. Shooting skateboarders for so many years, you know, especially with flip tricks, that you want a good caught frame. So, I remember when I saw this at the time, just thinking, yeah, there it is, we got it. Shooting with the fisheye from underneath gives it a 90s vibe. She is changing skateboarding aesthetics, and I love it. She really marches to the beat of her own drum, and I highly respect that. She is inspiring.
Diego Todd – Kickflip
This will always go down as one of my favourite photos that I’ve ever shot because to me, that’s somewhere I grew up skating every day. So to have pro skaters there, skating where I grew up skating, is just indescribable, dude. It’s something that makes me so happy. To go back thirty years later, to where I grew up skating, and have these guys skating the same spot has been unbelievable. That specific sign is the name of the park that was my EMB from the time I saw my very first demo at that park. The demo was before I even skated. I watched Ron Allen and Matt Hensley, and that was the seed that made me want to skate and become a skater. So to go back and shoot a photo on that very sign is special. Nobody ever goes to my hometown, it’s an hour away from Denver, so everyone just goes there instead. It was amazing to be with everyone on that trip and to show them around. Diego Todd, in the last year, has got so good; he has really levelled up his skating. It’s cool to see that. I feel like you don’t see that so much these days. He was always good, but he is so gnarly now. He came into that trip guns blazing.
Beatrice Domond – Frontside 5-0
I love Beatrice, another person, a real individual who calls it like she calls it. I love this photo because it’s an unconventional way to shoot a ledge trick. You’re supposed to show how high the ledge is, but I had selfish intentions because I wanted to show the Walt Disney centre in the background. We could never get a good photo involving the Walt Disney Centre unless you shot the wallride. Kader [Sylla] was trying to boardslide a rail there, which is now knobbed, so I thought this opportunity was so fucking cool with a frontside 5-0 right in your face. Sometimes the rules need to be broken, that’s what I always say. The normal rules would mean you have to show the ledge, but I decided not to, and it ended up being a great photo. Beatrice is amazing. I think we’ve been in such a period of big skateboarding, stunt skateboarding, it’s good to go back to the essence of it by showing just skateboarding.
Zion Wright – Backside Indy
This was a crazy shoot; it was actually a Red Bull shoot where they permitted this crazy spot on the top of the Edge building in New York City. It’s 100 floors up on top of there, and it was such a beautiful experience. We did it at four in the morning at sunrise, and it will always be one of my favourite photos. I have a handful of photos that stand out as being unique for different reasons. Zion [Wright] is so steezy looking, I’m really lucky to have that photo in my archive. I’m a big New Yorker, and I love New York to look at. Having shot skating for 30 years, a ramp becomes a ramp, a ledge becomes a ledge, and a rail becomes a rail. You have to challenge yourself to shoot those things differently and get creative, but it really helps when you have a background and a situation that makes the photo. You can just point a camera at that and you’re going to get a good photo, it’s too perfect, and too beautiful. My only nerves in this situation were that they wanted him to do a 540 and it was a narrow ramp, a quarter pipe with a big roll in, but of course he nailed it. I think that you can tell I’m a street skater when you look at photos I have taken of someone skating transition or vert, whereas someone like [Dave] Swift or [Michael] Burnett, they are great at shooting that stuff because they are vert skaters and I’m not.
Rowan Zorilla – Switch Frontside 50-50
When shooting photos, there’s a choice: do you want to make it scenic? Or do you want to make it gnarly? This photo specifically was really hard to shoot because it’s switch frontside, and I couldn’t get in front of him good enough with the fisheye. Honestly, with this one, I just started framing it up, and there was a beautiful sunset in progress. You can see how gnarly the spot is, so there was just a vibe with this one. If you look at the spot, precision is the word; it’s a really tricky switch 50-50, shout out to Rowan for figuring that one out. Casper Brooker was our tour guide on this. It was a Supreme trip for the Thrasher collab they did. Rowan is one of my all-time favs, that kid is so great. We had a good run with this one. It was quiet because we caught it in the evening, we did get fucked with by cops a little, but there was a cool, dead vibe to being where we were, which I enjoyed. We also checked out the crazy flat gap behind Rowan in this photo too, it’s huge. It’s ridiculous that Matthew Pritchard ollied that. I remember him, he’s a legend.
John Cardiel – Backside 50-50
This is John [Cardiel] before his accident, my first and only time shooting John skating. I was always a very big fan of John as a kid, his Thrasher SOTY issue [April 1993] was one of the first issues of Thrasher I ever got so there’s a lot of history there with him. He’s just such a special dude, and once I knew I was going to have this collection, I knew I wanted to have him in there. The thing with Vans is they don’t have this big archive of images from back in the day because Vans didn’t have a super big team for a period of time. People were riding for other companies. I feel like it was in a low period from 95-99 when Geoff [Rowley] really changed things. With that being said, [John] Cardiel has always been there, and I’m lucky to have this photo from that period from going on this random Vans trip. I remember being asked to go on that trip and thinking, “Wow, Vans are doing shit”. They had been opening parks, and you started to see a real pivot from where they were at in ’95, where I felt they were floating for a period. My photography now is very polished, but this photo of him is raw. I love putting myself into a circle with my photography and bringing it back to this.
This is a really special photo for me because of who John is, and what he means to skateboarders. The whole thing with John, if you’re a skater, you know he is the essence of skateboarding, of never giving up, and perseverance. He means so much to all of us. John is one of the top five greats; he is the ethos of the heritage and DNA of skateboarding, it’s undeniable. I love the arms, everything about it, it’s a photo that even a non-skater can understand, I think.
Atiba with all of the shoes from his “United Through Skateboarding” collection for Vans
We’re hyped to have the Vans capsule in store already and looking forward to your trip to London. I have a few questions about the collection. The first drop of shoes are defined by bold monochromatic colours. Can you tell us if there was a direct inspiration or reference for each of these? The bold orange made me think of the Jovontae Turner Thrasher cover…
I think that’s a great point and it’s possibly a subconscious thing, there’s definitely an Airwalk NTS thing because I loved that shoe and they bought those out in some memorable colours. Really though the inspiration was Virgil Abloh, I’ve been saying it any time I’ve spoken about the collection. He was great at that, any time I got a pair of his shoes I was so hyped. So shout out to V [Virgil Abloh], that’s my guiding star. I just love it when colours are bold, it’s a funny thing, especially in skating. When you’re older, you kind of fade into the bushes like Homer Simpson and I really like bucking against that. I’m not the weirdest dude but I get made fun of by my friend group all the time for wearing wacky stuff. I’m really glad I did that with these shoes though because honestly, the Solar orange Old Skool is the one that people have been really gravitating towards so I feel very confident that I made a right decision. As I said though, that’s all Virgil.
Eric Haze’s logo work is iconic – from Vision and the Beastie Boys to Stussy, Tommy Boy, and X-Girl. Did you know from the outset that you wanted him involved to add some subtle flavour to the branding?
I had a thing where I didn’t want to approach this as a signature line, that’s not what it is. I’m very stoked on the opportunity to do it but this isn’t me designing my own shoe or anything like that. I was conscious that I wanted to mix this up from that. They wanted me to have my name on it so my first thought was to have Haze write it to mix things up and involve him. It was amazing to have him write that.
Did this Vans capsule allow you to design an ideal piece of clothing?
I was super stoked to get to do that actually. The Cardiel jacket I loved and even the orange hoody with the 3M. What’s special about that is that it has photos in the pockets which is a hidden feature I don’t think many people know about. For me, getting to do that was really cool.
Zion Wright pictured wearing the Haze Zip Hood from Atiba’s Vans capsule
What is your favourite Vans image, something you pored over as a kid that cemented the brand or one of their shoes in your head?
Wow, this is good. I would say off top, and this is a wild one but I would say it was Tom Knox in Sk8 Hi’s and Eric Dressen. I want to say Ray [Barbee] but he was always wearing Vision back then. You know what, I’ve got it, it’s the Kareem [Campbell] front nose photo shot by Spike [Jonze], and also Matt Hensley, both of them wearing Chukka Boots.
Is there a UK skater you will always affiliate with Vans?
For me when it comes to UK skating Wig Worland is the guy. Skin [Phillips] and Wig Worland but Wig specifically. Wig’s lighting always stood out to me, it’s the epitome of great lighting. I just studied it very early on. It’s a hard lighting to do depending what the obstacle or the angle is but that trap lighting, and the way he does stuff is unbelievable. I loved English skaters like Curtis McCann and Simon Evans. I was a huge Danny Wainwright fan and he always skated in Vans. I was stoked to meet him at the Olympics because I had never met him before that.
Did this Vans capsule allow you to design an ideal piece of clothing?
I was super stoked to get to do that actually. The Cardiel jacket I loved and even the orange hoody with the 3M. What’s special about that is that it has photos in the pockets which is a hidden feature I don’t think many people know about. For me, getting to do that was really cool.
Atiba enjoying some downtime on the other side of the lens with a nollie backside tailslide shuvit out
Thanks for your time Atiba. We look forward to seeing you. Any last words?
I’m just so stoked on this opportunity. I’m super stoked to be coming to London for the event because UK skating has always had a very special place in my heart. I just did a workshop at Familia skate shop, and I really enjoy that aspect of things too, I’m really excited to do one of those there and speak to everyone.
We want to thank Atiba for finding the time to entertain this one and for the many images he has shot, and continues to shoot. His photos play a huge part in how we absorb skateboarding and we’re grateful. Be sure to follow him on Instagram for life updates, and check out his website for some more selects from the archives. Make sure you’re following the VansSkate Instagram account too.
Shop with us for the “United Through Skateboarding” collection and more from Vans.
Related reading: Offerings: Beatrice Domond , Offerings: Ray Barbee , Offerings: Rowan Zorilla
Previous 5000 Words Interviews: Kyle Seidler , Trent Evans , Richie Hopson , Ben Colen , Steve Van Doren , Rich West , Dominic Marley