ABOUT

For the past five years, Deanna Templeton has been photographing skateboard demonstrations, surfing competitions and other beachside congregations of kids in southern California. The photographs in Scratch My Name on Your Arm document a sexy trend emerging in Californian youth culture for getting famous surfers and skaters to autograph bare skin and underwear. Where once the autograph of an idol served primarily as a souvenir or keepsake (a scribble in a diary, on a poster or T-shirt), nowadays autographs on skin or intimate underwear have become the preferred method for drawing the attention of both the autographer and bystanders to one's scantily-clad self. In Scratch My Name on Your Arm, Templeton's black-and-white photographs record both an ephemeral form of calligraphy and body art and the burgeoning customs and styles of a subculture in the making.