Friedman Exhibition Covent Garden

Glen E. Friedman: My Rules – Review by Shelley-Georgia Yates

“What better thing to do on a Monday afternoon after work than go to London to check out Glen E. Friedman’s exhibition in Covent Garden. Personally when I hear Jay Adams and Beastie Boys combined with Photography I’m there, but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw more of my favourite people photographed such as Tony Alva, Public Enemy, Run DMC, Dead Kennedy’s and many more.

This exhibition showed a lot of Glen’s unseen images and some well-known work, majority of the work was shot by a 35mm camera and blown up beautifully, framed in a simple black frame. A lot of his first images were taken on a borrowed 35mm camera capturing the early skateboarding and hip-pop scene within West LA of America. ‘SkateBoarder’ magazine published one of Glen’s first images of Jay Adams which was shot on a borrowed camera. The Jay Adam’s shot below has been an inspiration to my skateboarding and photography for years; so to see the original print framed so elegantly was great.

I love Glen’s documentary styled portraits; what I would of done to of been in his shoes in the early 70s. I love both his skateboarding shots starting in the huge backyard pools to his Def Records’ artist portraits which are stunning with a strong contrast creating outstanding black and white imagery.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to hang around to meet Glen himself as I was off skating London’s Bay66 that night but I’m sure he would have understood. I would recommend any skateboarder to make a visit to this show as well as anyone who enjoys good portrait photography. If you’re not able to make the show then check out his book ‘My Rules’ which consists of 324-pages with over 350 photograph illustrations and contributing essays, the book can be found on Amazon etc.”