From California’s Skate Culture to Barcelona: Adolescence Through Ed Templeton’s Eyes

Tomorrow does not exist. It never arrives. At least, not within a photograph. Outside the camera, time passes, people grow, bodies change, and what we then imagined as the future ends up becoming the past. But the camera can stop that instant and preserve it as it was. And probably no other age is as linked to this desire to stop time as adolescence. A stage lived in the present and with intensity, squeezing what happens at that moment because tomorrow still seems too far away.

Both in photography and in adolescence, therefore, tomorrow seems not to arrive. Or, perhaps, we don't want it to arrive. Ed Templeton (California, 1972) has been photographing precisely this present for more than three decades, this very way, typical of adolescence, of living the present, a time when tomorrow still seems not to exist. Since 1993, when, almost by chance or intuition, he began to portray the world around him —the skaters with whom he shared his days in California, his friends, his partners, and also strangers—, his camera has been accumulating moments, people, and places that then were part of his daily life and that today, inevitably, have changed.

The protagonists of his photographs, teenagers from the 90s, have grown up; friendships have transformed and probably many of the romantic relationships that appear in them have faded with time. Even some of the people photographed would not fully recognize this version of themselves. But Templeton's photographs manage to preserve that ephemeral instant: how they dressed, where they were, with whom they were, and how they related.  

These eternal instants are the protagonists of Tomorrow Never Comes, the exhibition with which Templeton lands in Barcelona and which represents his first solo exhibition in Spain. In it, the photographs he took during his adolescence and youth coexist with recent images, some of them also captured in the Catalan capital. Because, although there are several kilometers and years separating the United States of the early 90s from Barcelona in 2026 —and aesthetics, fashion, or places have changed—, in all the photographs that make up the exhibition, this same way of living the present, typical of adolescence, is recognized.  

Images that transport the atmosphere of the underground culture in which they grew up to Espai Metrònom, in the heart of Born. Curated by Elisa Medde, director of Foto Colectania, and developed by the foundation itself, Tomorrow Never Comes brings together part of the extensive archive that Templeton has built over more than three decades with more recent works, establishing a dialogue between both moments.

Beyond the images, this skater and underground aesthetic is also present in the way the exhibition is organized —which can be visited for free until September 20, from 11 am to 8 pm—. Some of the photographs rest on skate ramps, as if the young protagonists of the snapshots were still sliding on them, while the texts in the room are printed on wooden tables and small vintage televisions complete the tour and immerse us in this universe.

Two adolescences, one same impulse

A central part of the exhibition is articulated around Wires Crossed, the photographic archive that Templeton has been building over these three decades, but to which recent works carried out in Barcelona are also added. His photographs highlight skaters' tricks and falls, but also everyday scenes that might seem insignificant: a conversation, a loving kiss, a group of friends sitting on the street. And next to them appear hospitals, injuries, police arrests, relationships and moments of intimacy.

Templeton has never tried to build an idealized image of skateboarding, but rather to show everything that was part of that life. “My intention has always been to reflect the entire skater aesthetic and everything it implied: the fun part of impossible tricks, but also the other side, such as the injuries, wounds and hospitals it entails,” explained the artist who traveled to the Catalan capital for the exhibition.

But these past and recent images related to the world of skate are also mixed with another series of photographs: Eδέμ (Eden), the campaign that Templeton photographed for the collaboration of Bershka (Inditex) with Aries, the British firm founded by Sofia Prantera and converted into a reference brand for streetwear. These photographs were captured in Huntington Beach in February 2026, more than thirty years after the photographer began, sporadically, to build this universe that now arrives in Barcelona.

The context has changed and so has the purpose of the images, but some of the themes that run through all his snapshots reappear: adolescence, desire, the construction of identity, friendship… The Bershka collection, in fact, starts from the story of Adam and Eve and the moment of their departure from Eden as a metaphor for adolescence itself, that moment when one abandons what is already known —Eden—, the familiar space, to begin to discover what is outside. A recurring theme in Templeton's work.  

In fact, it is the encounter between Templeton, Bershka and Aries that has motivated the exhibition itself: mixing some of the most emblematic images of his long career with the photographs taken for the Spanish brand's collection, which will launch the second part of this collection precisely this Friday, September 11, coinciding with the dates when the exhibition can be visited.  

Looking at the contemporary world through a lens

The Metrònom space, where the exhibition has been installed, is just a few steps from the institution that made it possible: Foto Colectania, a center that also exhibits the latest of another exhibition that also looks at the contemporary world, which can be seen until September 20. So many stories. So many questions, by Max de Esteban, moves in a very different direction from Templeton's, but shares with it a concern for our relationship with the present.

In this case, de Esteban's exhibition focuses on infrastructures, screens, data, networks, and generally everything that organizes and conditions our contemporary life without us necessarily being aware of it. Thus, while Templeton closely observes people and the spaces they inhabit, De Esteban directs his gaze towards the systems that remain behind them: what we don't always see, but which also determines how we live. Two ways of understanding the present —more complementary than opposed— that can be explored, in a few steps, at Born.