A few years ago, I was lucky enough to have Peter Smolik crash at my house. He then happily proceeded to take advantage of my fridge, my phone line and my hospitality. He called it the « skatemafia » philosophy.
To be a skateboarder basically means that you have the right to chill at other people’s houses, to help each other out, and a whole other bunch of hippy crap. He told me,with misty eyes, that all over the world there was a spirit which was unique to skateboarding, far away from pros and contests, far away from tricks and brandnames. I think I believed him for a while, but then I never saw him again, for almost 10 years.

A sparse room, a white picture frame, shade on shade, a white wall and a shelf.
A pile of books and trinkets are piled up on it, collecting dust. It’s 11 o’clock in the morning, Lio has just got up, half yawning, his hair style looks like it’s still asleep.
In Chile, in one of the suburbs of Santiago, nothing special will happen today, nor will anything happen 10,000 kilometers away in Hossegor, France. Right now, at home, it’s 5pm. 35 degrees in the shade, I’m wearing a scarf and am wrapped up in a pale purple duvet. I’m sick.
Between Lio and me, a simple computer screen and via Skype, and we chat in English.

Lio has chosen to put his computer on his lap, which, with the angle, does not really work wonders for his puffy face. Glasses perched on my nose, I’m sure he could return the compliment.
Lying on the couch, I look like shit, I’ve been ill for 10 days now.
Of course at the beginning we small talk, and of course at the beginning everyone pretends to be interested in the other’s health. Then we cut the crap and get down to buisness.
- Behind you, is that one of your photos? (pointing to the white frame on the wall )
Lio takes the picture off the wall, sits back down and explains :
- Yeah, it’s a photo that’s developped through a special procedure called << emulsion lift>>,but to tell you the truth, I’m fed up with it.
- You don’t like it?
- No, that’s not it, but I’ve just overdosed on this kind of photography. I wanna stop.
- Bad timing, that’s what this interview was about… I’ve never seen any « pano-skate-quasi-sequential » photos before.
- Me neither
- But then, you realize that you’re the only guy doing this, you should get into it. Haven’t you thought about selling them, or displaying them somewhere, or writing a book or something?
- Not really, I started that series two years ago. When I discovered this procedure, emulsion lift, I thought it was crazy, awesome. And I said to myself that it’d be cool to adapt it to skateboarding. But I didn’t take it to the next level. Just experimented a little.
- Yeah, but that doesn’t tell me why you stopped doing it.
- If I dig deep, I think I’m just fed up of skateboarding photos.
- Fuck, I think I called you at the wrong time.
- Nah, it’s just that I’ve photographed tricks and action shots for 10 years. Nowadays, I prefer to take lifestyle pictures, or other stuff, but there’s no market here in Chile for that type of photography. Not like in Europe.
- Do you reckon that in Europe, skateboarding photographers have more freedom to express themselves?
- Yes,you’re more open to that sort of stuff. Here, it’s tricks, tricks, tricks, all the mags swear only by the « tricks ». We’re pretty behind.
- Don’t worry about that, so is Europe.
- No, but here, if you don’t photograph a skater through a fisheye and in a certain way, your photos won’t get published. In Europe, you can be more artistic. It’s still skateboarding, and action shots are important, but all I ask is for the right to take photos in a different way.
- So you’ve decided to stop everything.
- Imagine that taking action shots was enough to live on. Choosing to do something else is a bit like saying that you’re constantly gonna have a hard time in life.
- That’s the price to pay to be an artist.
- I’m not an artist!

- But what you do is a form of art.
- What I do is nothing, well, it’s what I love doing, but I just do it for me. As soon as you start calling it art or you call me an artist, I get a feeling that I owe something. That I need to give a meaning to my photos, or that I need to please someone or something. No, I don’t do anything, and it’s better that way. The art of doing nothing. (laughs)
- So have you burnt all your boards? Do you continue to go skateboarding, and to like it?
- Man, I don’t know any better feeling in the world, and I’ll sure as hell never stop. It’s thanks to skateboarding that I discovered photography. (At the moment, Lio is working in audiovisual and advertising). It’s also skateboarding that allowed me to travel, which I continue to do.

Lio is pretty laid back, definitely not the violent type, full of testosterone. A koala. Yep, he reminds me of a koala. Let’s say that it’s because he just woke up,and because his flow of speech is kinda metronomic, phlegmatic, full of supressed rage. As if his dreams had been trampled on under his tripod. Skateboarding, he continued to mumble, had hurt him.
- Geez, it’s crazy the number of <> people there are in skateboarding. It’s true that tricks are cool, but fuck, it’s just a small part of skateboarding. There are so many other things in our culture that I find it stupid to only think about tricks.
- I often say that skateboarding should just be an excuse.
- Yeah, an excuse to be with your mates, an excuse to travel, an excuse to discover other cultures ,to muck around, to live, to live life differently to how they want us to live, to take photos, to outdo yourself.
- I think you’ve pretty much summed it up. We live 1000s of kilometers away from one another, we don’t know each other, we didn’t have the same childhood, or the same country of birth, and even so, skateboarding gave us the same dreams and the same values.
- You know what,I’m gonna continue my polaroid skateboarding series and try and turn it into a book. It’ll be the first ever book on skateboading in Chile!

The clock is ticking, it’s almost noon in Chile, when the Napoleon clock on the wall, found in a garage sale and surely fake, tells me that it’s 18 hours GMT.
It’s summertime in Hossegor and it’s raining; at Lio’s place, the sun’s rays are forcing him to squint his eyes and I don’t know what season it is on that fucking part of the globe, but the fact is that we are totally on the same wavelength.
I don’t know if I’ve already written this, but a few years ago, I was lucky enough to have Peter Smolik crash at my place… enlightened, he had spoken of a worldly philosophy, that all you had to do was travel around with this bit of wood under your feet in order to meet other guys like us.
And it’s true to say that neither I nor Lio will contradict that fact, and even if all this stinks of stupidity; to be a skateboarder, it means that you’re also kind of … a fucking hippy.