Prints Dead: Golden Hour
What do you do when all the magazines disappear? Start another one.
Post magazine apocalypse, Matt Price was one of the first of our generation of skate photographers to see a golden opportunity to make his own publication. Rather than be disheartened by the void in skate media, Matt was excited to write his own rules on how to tell a story in the skateboard world. With no limitations or over arching agendas, Matt made the most of his creative freedoms and lack of deadlines to dive deeper into some of the magic that is ever flourishing out of the expansive culture and individuals within the realms of this silly wooden toy. Golden Hour is the product of the inherently innovative nature of the sport. After the release of his fourth issue, a retrospective of UK skate photographer Wig Worland, we felt it was finally time to catch up with him about the inner workings of his publication and his creative process.
How did Golden Hour come about?
I started doing it cause I wanted to tell longer form stories. You know when you get an article printed in a magazine and you have 50 photos leftover cause they can only run 8? Maybe you sell one for an ad but you’re like “what do I do with the rest of these photos” and out of the context of the story there is really no use for them. The first issue was born out of having a big body of photos that felt right together. I wanted to print it on my own stock, I got to pick the paper and see how it looked, rather than submitting it. I wanted to see some of those photos printed my way. I’d been making stuff with my really good friend Andrew McCarthy since we were like 16 and he’s a really rad graphic designer and web developer. He was itching to do something outside of his job so we linked back up and put that first issue together.
So you weren’t actually working at a magazine at the time of the first issue?
No at the time I was just working for CCS and shooting skate photos wasn’t really for my job anymore. I shot some skate photos for CCS but most of what they needed wasn’t skate action photos, so I was just doing that for fun and I was able to shoot photos in a way that felt really just how I wanted them to look with no thought of what an editor’s gonna think or what would work for a magazine. I would submit to Transworld and Jaime Owens is a good friend, but Thrasher doesn’t run my photos, so it was like “there’s nowhere to put ‘em”.
Did you have aspirations of making it a regular magazine when you first started?
No… well, it’s always been in the back of my head but the goal when it first started was to just do one annually, give it lots of time and figure out the right story. There has been the thought that’ll be the foundation and later on we can push it into a quarterly to do a real skate media thing but I kind of hit a point where I realized I don’t want that to be the thing that consumes all my time and energy. Now it can just stay what it is. The new issue with Wig Worland, that’s for a pretty niche group of people. Skate photographers might be into it and British skaters and maybe a handful of curious US skaters. No offense to Wig, I love Wig but if I was doing a mag that was going to be my bread and butter and pay my bills, those aren’t the kind of stories I would be putting in it because I would be too busy chasing what was hot and trendy. Trying to do what I thought people would want to pay money for. Whereas this was just a story that I wanted to tell and that I think is important. Now I’m really happy that I never expanded it. Now it can just be whatever Drew and I want it to be.
Specific to this issue, how did you find out about the story of Wig and realize you wanted to tell that?
I came across a photo about 10 years ago that Wig shot on Tumblr. It was that Pete Hellicar photo, it was a really cool photo and a really cool trick. I saw ‘Wig Worland’ on it I thought “how is there a skate photographer that I don’t know” it felt crazy. I thought I knew everything about skate photography at that moment. I looked into him a bit more and over the years more skate photos by him popped up and I was like “oh, of course that dude shot that, he’s amazing”. He became one of my favourite photographers that I looked up to. There’s a ton of motion, the close up fisheye.. stuff that I do now that I took inspiration from. To me he sits right next to a Spike Jonze as far as how important his skate photos are to skateboarding as a whole and skate photography. I always knew that it would be cool to do a project with him cause I felt like not enough people knew about his work or who he was. Golden Hour serves as a template to tell a story that I think is cool, like with the Fred Gall issue, I thought maybe one day I’d do a documentary about Freddie but if a story is cool, it can be told in any medium.
Did it feel liberating to be like “none of my photos are even going in this thing”
A little bit, yeah. It definitely took pressure off. Well, I didn’t feel pressure leading up to the show. When I put out Golden Hour there’s always a photo show component and it’s usually my shit. Putting on your own photo show is a really daunting task. It’s scary. The fear there is “what if no-one comes” that would be devastating and embarrassing and I would crawl up into a ball and die. With this show, I didn’t have that fear if no-one came, cause they’re not my photos. If no-one comes, Wig gets to feel sad (laughs) not me, this is sick. But the day of I was really nervous, for all the normal reasons when you’re putting on an event, wanting the sponsors to be happy, wanting Wig to be happy. I didn’t want anything to embarrass him in front of the people that he had invited, not that anything would, but you get in your head. So there was a whole different type of stress.
After putting something out full of someone else’s photos are you like, oh shit I need to put out something of all my own stuff too?
Yeah kind of. I did feel that afterward, “now I gotta do another one for me”. I just got hit up yesterday about another older photographer that I should do one with and I’m like, fuck, I want to but that needs to be a spinoff project or something cause I don’t want Golden Hour to turn into only that. I have so many stories that I want to tell and shoot new photos for or stuff that I have already and want to put together.
Do you miss working at a skate mags where you have to constantly come up with and put out stories?
I feel the opposite. Working at the mag you just do a bunch of tour articles. It’s a constant crank every month to put out a mag so it’s harder to put out unique stuff. For some people, it lights them up and they’re good at it, I’m not very organized so the more I have to put out the worse it all is gonna get. This last Golden Hour took two years to come out and we didn’t care. There’s no-one waiting on this. It’s not like “Thrasher didn’t come out this month, oh my god!” No-one cares if this takes 5 years or 10 or 6 months. It helps me to make sure that the stories are what we want.
Do you have an idea of what the next story you want to tell is?
There’s a few working ones. My dream since I started Golden Hour is to do an issue with the Osaka Daggers. I met those guys 12 years ago when I first went to Japan. We were skating with them one night at Triangle Park in Osaka and I was like “oh my god, this is a story”. I don’t even know what the fuck it is, but there’s a story there and it needs to be told. It’s magic and crazy. It’s these old guys that are all punk and skate there every night - it’s so sick. I’ve talked a little bit to Chopper and Dal and some of those guys, so now that I’m going to have a little bit more time free’d up soon, I might reach out to those guys and start the conversation. I wanna go spend a few weeks with them, shoot, skate and hangout. With a story like that you have to go there and spend some more time to figure out what the story is going to be. I also want an excuse for me and my wife to go live in Osaka for a month and hang out with these crazy guys. That’s one I want to do and in the same vein as like the Freddie issue, I see long term that I want to do a Kader one and I’ve known this for a few years. I think Kader is such a special skateboarder and I’ve had access to Kader since he was so young and through the years, like a chronicle of someone that has grown up in skateboarding, which I think is super unique. You could do it now and it would be cool but the longer you wait, the more interesting it’s going to get. So far he’s just getting better and better, he’s growing up and there will be a story to be told about him. You shoot with certain skaters sometimes and you’re like “I’m sitting on something special”, you leave a shoot and you’re like, that was a special moment I got with a special person. I feel that way every time I shoot with Kader, he’s just got the juice.
Is there any other publications that you looked to for inspiration with Golden Hour?
I think I look at more photo books for inspiration. It’s almost more like a photo book than a media publication. I really like physically the way it feels and looks. The advertising model is one that I ripped off from that magazine Toilet Paper where they just have one sponsor per issue and it’s on the back page. Limiting it to 60 pages was also inspired by them cause Toilet Paper was only 40 pages and its still really impactful, fun to look at and cool. I was originally looking at the same page count but landed on 60 to have a little more room to tell the story. I think it’s a really sweet spot for medium form storytelling. Most publications are over 100 pages and that starts to get pretty daunting cause one story has got to be a couple of decades long, that’s a long story. Meanwhile Issue 3 of Golden Hour was shot in 5 days and its 60 pages. That was lucky that we got that, but it’s possible.
What is your regular shooting schedule heading out skating now that you don’t work specifically for a magazine?
There’s two lanes that I shoot in and that is following work or following a magical skater. It’s either someone hits me up for a day rate shoot and I’ll go shoot whoever you want me to shoot, it’s work. Then the other half is just who is getting me excited. I try to be pretty proactive about reaching out to young skaters to be like, let’s go shoot a skate photo. Some of them are like “I’ve never shot a skate photo” kids don’t even shoot skate photos that often anymore. A good example is Carl Aikens, I’m a huge fan of Carl’s skating and a few years ago he posted a clip and I was like, I wanna shoot a photo of him, so bad. So I hit up Tyler Cichy at Huf and was like “can you just set up a shoot so I can go shoot with Carl” and I just made up a shoot and said we’d do a CCS interview on the blog cause I just wanted an excuse. It was amazing. That day we got so many photos that I thought were so sick. He’s just got that magic, when you shoot him it looks fuckin’ rad. It’s all people based. It’s not trick based, it’s not spot based, it’s way more about, I just think this person has something I like and I wanna go out and shoot ‘em.
How often do you actually get out to shoot skate photos?
I like to at least go out shooting skating once a week, thats what I probably average most of the year. Some weeks are crazy and you’re out 3-4 days in a row. I’ve been getting hit up more for skate stuff which is cool and it’s fun to work with brands and have specific goals. Like I just did a shoot for Carhartt and they’re like “these are the outfits you gotta shoot them in” which is sick cause I got to go out with Josh, Reggie and Tanner. They’re all cool people to shoot with and we do have a goal. I try to lean into shoots like that cause I like having a goal. Otherwise it all ends up being a trick game, like is it a hard trick? I really don’t care.
When’s the last time you went on a skate trip?
Two weeks ago. I went on a Cons trip. I was doing video content though, not shooting skate photos which was funny. I was shooting stuff with a phone, so I’ll do anything apparently (laughs). Whenever I go on a skate trip now I’m like the old head, telling kids about what skate trips used to be like. This trip I was just on, it was so funny, no-one even wanted to party. I don’t really party anymore but I was on a trip, I’m in Puerto Rico and there was a casino next to the hotel and I was like “lets go out!” And I group texted, “going to the casino” and only one person was down, which is crazy cause if I was on a trip 10-15 years ago, we would have all been at that casino until like 6 in the morning every night. It’s good and it’s healthy and I like that, that’s where it’s gone but when I do go on skate trips I feel old and I’m only 36. I’m not even that old but I’ve been doing this for so long. I started to work at The Skateboard mag when I was 18 so that’s almost 20 years now and I feel a little old.
Get your hands on Golden Hour, here.