Skin Phillips is a Swansea-born photographer whose career has spanned more than four decades, documenting skateboarding culture from South Wales to California and around the world.
Entirely self-taught, Skin began photographing skateboarding in the early 1980s, travelling to competitions and demos across Europe before moving to the United States. In the early 1990s he joined TransWorld SKATEboarding, where he went on to become Editor-in-Chief, before later working with adidas Skateboarding as team manager.
Over the course of his career, Skin has photographed some of the most influential skateboarders of their generations, including Mark Gonzales, Lance Mountain, Steve Caballero, Chad Muska, John Cardiel and Matt Hensley, building relationships with many of them that spanned decades.
Known for capturing far more than the trick itself, Skin’s photography documents the people, personalities, places and moments that make up skateboarding culture. His images have appeared in leading skate publications and exhibitions internationally, including work celebrating his long-running photographic relationship with Mark Gonzales.
In 2023, his major 360° retrospective at Swansea’s Glynn Vivian Art Gallery brought together decades of iconic and previously unseen photography alongside a newly commissioned body of work documenting Swansea’s contemporary skate scene.