Fall 2024 Showcase Whittington

Skateboarding Allowed began last semester and has evolved into a body of work that focuses on the importance of the skatepark in the American South. Many skateboarders live between never ending fields, kudzu coverings, and cracked parking lots. The skatepark, a public space, is vital to the Southern skateboarder’s survival. It can provide a space for friendship, protection from trespassers, and ensure the passing down of knowledge.

​Iain Borden’s book Skateboarding, Space, and the City: Architecture and the body is a foundation piece for this project. Borden brings skateboarding into Henri Lefebvre’s world of space and architecture. Since much of the literature focuses on skateboarders in urban areas, Skateboarding Allowed attempts to bring these ideas to the American South.

​The photographs in this project focus on skateboarders who live in Oxford and Lafayette County, Mississippi and the area’s rural and commercial landscapes. Some photographs stand alone, while others are combined to create collages. The collaged images echo the Southern skateboarder’s process of creating new spaces by drawing direct connections to the Mississippi landscape.

The Southern skateboarder’s identity is tied to the landscape in ways West and East Coast skateboarders are not. For the Southern skateboarder, skateable spaces are sacred, and they must continuously reinvent themselves and their spaces. These photographs only show a small portion of the Northern Mississippi’s landscape and what the Oxford Skatepark means and is for skateboarders in this area. Moving forward this body of work will expand to showcase more of this community.