Skate Thru the City

Skate Thru the City is an ongoing photographic series exploring the relationship between skateboarders and the urban environment. Shot entirely on black and white film, primarily ILFORD HP5 Plus in both 35mm and 120, the work moves through Panama, Barcelona, San Francisco, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and the spaces in between. It focuses on the raw energy, freedom, and creativity that define skateboarding as a living, breathing urban subculture. Each frame holds a moment where movement and architecture collide, where a line, a trick, or even a push through the street becomes part of the city’s visual language.

Skateboarding has always existed in dialogue with the city. It redefines space. A stair set becomes a challenge, a plaza becomes a meeting point. Marble ledges, rough asphalt, chipped curbs, these surfaces carry years of impact and repetition. There’s history in every spot. Shooting in black and white strips everything back to what matters: light, shadow, texture, and timing. The distractions fall away, leaving only the essential.

A natural alignment

There’s something about film that naturally aligns with skateboarding. It’s unpredictable and unforgiving. You don’t get endless retries, you commit to the moment or you miss it. You start anticipating instead of reacting, reading the skater, the light, and the spot all at once. It’s the same mindset as skating: patience, repetition, timing.

ILFORD HP5 Plus plays a central role in that process. Its latitude allows me to work across constantly changing light, harsh midday sun, deep shadows between buildings, or overcast skies, without losing detail. It handles contrast in a way that feels true to the street, holding texture in both highlights and shadows. The grain structure adds to the image rather than distracting from it, sitting naturally within the concrete, the spots, and the tricks. It’s a film that responds well when pushed, which is essential when shooting fast, often unpredictable situations where light isn’t always ideal.

Shaping my approach

The series is photographed across 35mm and medium format using a Leica M6, Hasselblad 503cx, and Olympus Pen FT, each camera shaping the way I approach the street. The Leica M6 is fast and intuitive, allowing me to stay close to the action and react instinctively. It’s about being in it, not observing from a distance.

The Hasselblad 503cx slows everything down. It forces a more deliberate way of seeing, where composition, geometry, and balance take priority. With it, the city becomes more structured, and the skater becomes part of that structure, less about speed, more about form.

The Olympus Pen FT brings a different energy altogether. The half-frame format creates a sequence-like rhythm, reflecting the repetition of attempts and the flow of a session. It’s raw, immediate, and unpredictable, qualities that feel inherent to street skateboarding.

Tangible and Permanent

The process doesn’t end in the street. All prints are hand made in my darkroom on ILFORD Multigrade Fibre Based Classic Glossy paper. Its tonal range allows for deep blacks and clean highlights while maintaining subtle detail throughout the frame. The gloss surface enhances contrast and texture, giving the images a presence that echoes the physicality of the spots themselves, street details, shadows, worn surfaces, and light bouncing off concrete.

Printing by hand completes the cycle. What starts as a fleeting moment, a trick landed or the inbetween moments during a session, becomes something tangible and permanent.

Skate Thru the City is ultimately about more than tricks. It’s about the spaces in between, the atmosphere of the streets, and the people who move through them. It’s about skateboarding as a form of expression rooted in freedom, community, and constant exploration.

As the series continues to evolve, it becomes a growing archive of these moments, an ongoing record of how skateboarding shapes the city, and how the city, in return, shapes the way skateboarding is seen, felt, and lived.

All images © Rafael Gonzales