A Skateboarding Squad For A New Generation

Team GB bronze medallist Sky Brown may have been one of the faces of the recent Tokyo Olympics, but back in 2012 skateboarding was still incredibly male-dominated. It was rare to see girls or women skating at local parks, only a handful of women showed up at national contests, and very few of those made a decent living from skateboarding. But Hannah was still surprised to find the skate media, in particular, so apathetic. “I noticed there was little support or coverage of the women’s skate scene,” she says. “But I also knew I wanted to get in there and photograph this diverse group of skateboarders. I believed in them as a positive thing for the media to show.”

“I realised if I didn’t start taking it seriously and making the effort to say, ‘This is what I do as part of my job,’ then the women coming after me were not going to see it as a legitimate career path,” she says. “They’d do it the same way I did, little things on the side, trying to find a way to go to this event or that, as no one had invited me.”

“I want the next path for them to be invited, for 50% of photographers on the sidelines at the Paris Olympics to be women. Why shouldn’t there be if 50% of the riders are women?” The 2016 decision to include skateboarding in the Olympics was not without controversy, with many seeing the decision as selling out skating’s punk roots. But the IOC’s insistence on having an equal number of male and female competitors proved a boon for women’s skateboarding. Prize and sponsorship money dramatically increased, as did the opportunities for women to compete, bringing more and more skaters into the sport.

Hannah knew the women’s skate contests would generate a lot of attention at the Tokyo Olympics, but she wanted to make sure that spotlight showcased the genuine breadth and diversity of women and non-binary skateboarders, who she’d met during a decade of shooting them; to show the whole pyramid, rather than just its new shiny peak. Which is where the idea for this photo series, entitled To Balance is Trust, came about. But this time, she wanted to do it properly, “to do these voices and faces justice” as she says, and to show the hard work that was being put in across skateboarding. So, she applied for and won a Getty Grant as part of its #ShowUs series, in which women photographers seek to shatter beauty stereotypes. This meant she could upgrade her camera gear and actually concentrate solely on it, rather than it being a passion project she fitted in as and when.

The uniqueness of the series is further enhanced by the fact Hannah gave the skaters a side of A4 paper to write their own captions. “I wanted to put the power back into the hands of the skaters,” she says. “To not put words in their mouths but instead give them the chance to write what skateboarding means to them.” The girls and women talk about how skateboarding feels like freedom, how it helps them express themselves and reset and, most of all, how it’s fun. “The aim of the series was not about me as a photographer, it was about these stories and these women and non-binary skaters. People who are putting time, effort and passion in to bringing more people into skateboarding. That made me so happy.”