Synopses & Reviews
View Photos.
Published by New York University Press and Lyndhurst Books of the Center for Documentary Studies.
The stunning photographs of We Skate Hardcore reveal the determination, the dreams, and the rough and tumble story of urban Latino youth coming of age in New York City. Vincent Cianni spent eight years photographing and documenting a group of Latino in-line skaters in the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Cianni weaves together images of the skaters with their own words, showing the skaters' struggles to find a place to skate and build skate parks, and just to survive in the city. In the evacuated industrial spaces of their neighborhood, the skaters carve out places for enjoying their sport and showing off their skillsoften thwarting established rules and authority figures in the process. Their stories are both personal and resonant; they reflect the trials and tenacity of a young urban culture, as well as life in Southside's Latino community.
In addition to black and white and color photos, We Skate Hardcore includes a DVD with footage of the skaters featured in the book, as well as additional photographs and an essay.
We Skate Hardcore, with its verve and youthful energy, will especially appeal to photographers, those interested in urban studies and adolescence, New Yorkers, and in-line skaters and extreme sports enthusiasts everywhere.
Review
"Think 'West Side Story' with skates."-Boston Sunday Globe,
Review
"Cianni's collection of photographs is an arresting look at a group of boys who embraced a dangerous sport and in the process of building their skate parks and learning new stunts, formed a tight-knit community of friends who looked out for each other and helped one another survive."-Brooklyn Paper,
Review
"Vincent Cianni has published a gritty turbulent account of a group of Latino in-line skaters hanging out and rolling through the rugged Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York."-Photo District News,
Review
"Chronicling young, mostly Latino people who used neighborhood parks and plazas to perfect their in-line skating moves. . . . More than just cool action shots. The images portray how these teens climbed toward adulthood in a changing neighborhood's public spaces."-Time Out New York,
Review
"Chronicling young, mostly Latino people who used neighborhood parks and plazas to perfect their in-line skating moves. . . . More than just cool action shots. The images portray how these teens climbed toward adulthood in a changing neighborhood's public spaces."
"Cianni's collection of photographs is an arresting look at a group of boys who embraced a dangerous sport and in the process of building their skate parks and learning new stunts, formed a tight-knit community of friends who looked out for each other and helped one another survive."
"Vincent Cianni has published a gritty turbulent account of a group of Latino in-line skaters hanging out and rolling through the rugged Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York."
"An evocative collection of black-and-white and full-color photographs captures the intriguing world of urban skaters, both in words and images."
"Think 'West Side Story' with skates."
Review
"An evocative collection of black-and-white and full-color photographs captures the intriguing world of urban skaters, both in words and images."-Forecast,
Review
"Think 'West Side Story' with skates."
Review
"David Shumway's (NYU Press, 2003) exercised an influence on the margins of academic film studies[.]"-Film Quarterly,
Review
“An extremely valuable contribution to the history of that supposedly timeless ideal, the intimate relationship.”
-Elizabeth Freeman,author of The Wedding Complex
Review
“A wide-ranging and beautifully dialectical analysis of the modern discourses on love and intimacy. David Shumway overturns some of the usual assumptions about romantic love and, in the process makes original, often surprising observations about literature, movies, pop music, self-help books, and a variety of other texts. Modern Love is a pleasure to read, and it contributes significantly to our understanding of modernity.”
-James Naremore,Indiana University
Review
“Fascinating and timely.”
-Intams Review,
Synopsis
The stunning photographs of We Skate Hardcore reveal the determination, the dreams, and the rough and tumble story of urban Latino youth coming of age in New York City. Vincent Cianni spent eight years photographing and documenting a group of Latino in-line skaters in the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Cianni weaves together images of the skaters with their own words, showing the skaters' struggles to find a place to skate and build skate parks, and just to survive in the city. In the evacuated industrial spaces of their neighborhood, the skaters carve out places for enjoying their sport and showing off their skills often thwarting established rules and authority figures in the process. Their stories are both personal and resonant; they reflect the trials and tenacity of a young urban culture, as well as life in Southside's Latino community.
We Skate Hardcore, with its verve and youthful energy, will especially appeal to photographers, those interested in urban studies and adolescence, New Yorkers, and in-line skaters and extreme sports enthusiasts everywhere.
"
Synopsis
View Photos.
Published by New York University Press and Lyndhurst Books of the Center for Documentary Studies.
Chronicling young, mostly Latino people who used neighborhood parks and plazas to perfect their in-line skating moves. . . . More than just cool action shots. The images portray how these teens climbed toward adulthood in a changing neighborhoodas public spaces.a
--Time Out New York
Cianni's collection of photographs is an arresting look at a group of boys who embraced a dangerous sport and in the process of building their skate parks and learning new stunts, formed a tight-knit community of friends who looked out for each other and helped one another survive.
--Brooklyn Paper
Vincent Cianni has published a gritty turbulent account of a group of Latino in-line skaters hanging out and rolling through the rugged Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York.
--Photo District News
An evocative collection of black-and-white and full-color photographs captures the intriguing world of urban skaters, both in words and images.
--Forecast
Think 'West Side Story' with skates.
--Boston Sunday Globe
Thoughtful, timeless portraits. The book is beautifully designed.
--Dallas Morning News
A visually compelling book- even at a glance.
--After Image
The boys' playful, sometimes combative camaraderie and their constantly thwarted efforts to build and maintain a skate park give Cianni a narrative backbone around which he weaves a lively picture of the community as a whole. Because much of this story is told by the boys themselves, frequently in handwritten captions, We Skate Hardcore has a particularly vivid voice, but Cicnnimatches it easily with his photos which combine fully engaged personal journalism with brotherly affection.
Photograph
Reveals a fascinating world of urban skaters.
--NYU Today
a Ciannias] best pictures are full of the complicated pleasures of brotherhood, and remain as exciting as the moment they were made.a
--The New Yorker
An amazingly vivid documentary that runs the full gamut from exhilaration to devastation, and back. It's more exhilarating than not, though, because it is about how kids invent their own lives, whatever life has handed them.
--Luc Sante
We Skate Hardcore points to a very hard reality. Cianni's photographs bear faces of an enduring working class, the people of Los Sures in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You see their desire for life, family, home, and community, to move forward and become someone. You also see in these bold as well as intimate portraits, scenes, action shots, and still video sequences, the life, blood, spirit, conscience, pride, and zeal of young in-line skaters and their tribes.
--Juan Sanchez, Hunter College
The stunning photographs of We Skate Hardcore reveal the determination, the dreams, and the rough and tumble story of urban Latino youth coming of age in New York City. Vincent Cianni spent eight years photographing and documenting a group of Latino in-line skaters in the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Cianni weaves together images of the skaters with their own words, showing the skaters' struggles to find a place to skate and build skate parks, and just to survive in the city. In the evacuated industrial spaces of their neighborhood, the skaters carve out places for enjoying their sport and showingoff their skills--often thwarting established rules and authority figures in the process. Their stories are both personal and resonant; they reflect the trials and tenacity of a young urban culture, as well as life in Southside's Latino community.
In addition to black and white and color photos, We Skate Hardcore includes a DVD with footage of the skaters featured in the book, as well as additional photographs and an essay.
We Skate Hardcore, with its verve and youthful energy, will especially appeal to photographers, those interested in urban studies and adolescence, New Yorkers, and in-line skaters and extreme sports enthusiasts everywhere.
Synopsis
“My ideas of romance came from the movies,” said Woody Allen, and it is to the movies—as well as to novels, advice columns, and self-help books—that David Shumway turns for his history of modern love.
Modern Love argues that a crisis in the meaning and experience of marriage emerged when it lost its institutional function of controlling the distribution of property, and instead came to be seen as a locus for feelings of desire, togetherness, and loss. Over the course of the twentieth century, partly in response to this crisis, a new language of love—“intimacy”—emerged, not so much replacing but rather coexisting with the earlier language of “romance.”
Reading a wide range of texts, from early twentieth-century advice columns and their late twentieth-century antecedent, the relationship self-help book, to Hollywood screwball comedies, and from the “relationship films” of Woody Allen and his successors to contemporary realist novels about marriages, Shumway argues that the kinds of stories the culture has told itself have changed. Part laypersons history of marriage and romance, part meditation on intimacy itself, Modern Love will be both amusing and interesting to almost anyone who thinks about relationships (and who doesnt?).
About the Author
Vincent Cianni began photographing the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1994. He teaches photography at Parsons School of Design and at workshops throughout New York and the United States. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.