American photographers Deanna Templeton and Ed Templeton bring their first Australian collaborative photographic exhibition, ‘Death Metal Summer’ to the AGWA this month
Ed Templeton: Mike Maldonado, Davenport, Iowa 1998. Digital fiber print, 91.4 x 61.2 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California. © Ed Templeton, 1998.
Considered superstars of street photography and skate culture, Deanna Templeton and Ed Templeton shoot with film and respond to the chaotic intensity, beauty and sadness of life in an off-the-cuff street-style manner. Ed Templeton became a professional skateboarder a month before graduating from high school in 1990. He credits skateboarding and art as sustaining him through challenging teenage years and making him more productive. It was a little different for Deanna. She started taking photos at the age of fifteen, shooting the LA punk scene with a camera her parents had bought her to hopefully save her from falling out of their orbit. Full of doubts and insecurities about every level of herself and her life, Deanna filled her diaries with these reflections from an early age.
The exhibition comprises three large wall installations and features more than 140 works produced between 1995 and 2022. Death Metal Summer includes many of their most famous images – from Deanna’s exquisite swimming pools photos to Ed’s iconic work documenting skateboarders – as well as those shot on their local turf Huntington Beach, California, where late capitalist life and the suburban dream are collapsing in on themselves. Click here for more information and here to view an Instagram reel showing the couple’s works.
