Skate like a lass: Juliet Klottrup’s take on skating, survival and self-expression up north

Growing up, Juliet Klottrup got stuck into skateboarding culture “watching skate VHS tapes, playing video games and poring over magazines with my brothers”, she tells It’s Nice That. Although enamoured by the scene, the photographer and filmmaker never quite ventured much further into the sport, a big reason being there weren’t many people that looked like her involved – or at least anyone that she could see.

In 2022, a window into the world opened up when she attended a DIY skate jam hosted by Cumbria Cvven, a girl’s skate group based in the north of England. Here, a spot on top of a disused multi-story car park in Barrow-in-Furness hosted an inclusive space to skate and skillshare, fitted with makeshift wooden ramps built by the skaters themselves. Left in awe from the group’s ability to bring people of all ages and abilities together and the sheer creativity put into this “positive repurposing of a space”, Juliet ended up spending the next two years using her practice as a vehicle to research and document grassroots skateboarding communities for women and LGBTQIA+ people up north.

Through moving images, intimate portraits and interviews that weave together peoples personal stories, Juliet created Skate Like a Lass: a moving archive of these skate subcultures that aims to “address gaps in representation, participation, and historical documentation within skateboarding – a space where marginalised and LGBTQIA+ individuals have been historically underrepresented,” she says.

Unlike a more conventional approach to documentary photography where communities are captured by outsiders, Juliet used the project to share her craft, handing over the camera to skaters to document themselves. Cameras were available for skaters throughout the project with the view that this would “capture the skating experience through a lens of individuality”.

“A key aspect of skating culture is self-documentation,” Juliet explains. “In this project I was really inspired by the work of North American photographer Wendy Ewald – renowned for empowering young people to use photography as a means of self-expression.” In addition to images authored by the project’s participants, and the photographer’s more formal portraits of skaters, Juliet amalgamated a blend of old and new DIY documentation methods. Using Super 8, VHS, and digital formats, Juliet wanted to reference the DIY aesthetics of skating videos over time, resulting in in a three-minute short that was filmed with the support from DOP Abi Timmins and edited by Sara Faulkner.

What arose from this co-authored collection of imagery was a new space for authenticity in a sport where failure to land tricks isn’t conventionally captured as much as the fierceness to go on. Whilst classic skate photography usually captures the highs of competitions or “skaters who have spent all day with someone trying to land a trick”, Juliet has learnt that framing these images isn’t so much about “putting someone on the spot”, but “working out how to get the best shots together – we are all work in progress”.

The project’s short premiers online today (18 February), having been selected as a winner for the Shiny Awards this month. Juliet will also be putting the project on show in two exhibitions of Skate Like A Lass throughout February, in Preston at SHOP opening on the 27 February – 2 March, and at Aunty Social in Blackpool from the 20-25 March. The photographer has plans to release a zine of the images this month in collaboration with Crack Magazine’s graphic designer Femke Campbell, in order to archive the collectives, skaters, and locations she’s encountered in print.

Following this latest stage of a project that might never quite be finished, the photographer has bought her four-year-old niece a skateboard, ready to venture into the sport together: “I hope we can learn together and pass on what the skaters have taught me,” she ends. “I have learnt so much from them about community, survival, resilience, kinship, trust and bravery.”