High-skates game: A fresh perspective on roller derby

Photography by Philippa O’Brien

Essay by Poppie Johnson for North & South, 5 September, 2019

Contact sport with a side of counter-culture is in the frame for Kingston photographer Philippa O’Brien.

When Philippa O’Brien began a project to document roller derby, she spent hours driving around Wellington looking for the perfect hidden corners to stage her street photography.

One night, O’Brien collected a skater known as “Meat Train” for a shoot in Island Bay. An unapologetically raw and powerful woman, she competes with fake fingers grasping her neck, costume blood dripping over her eyes, and tattoos on display. She wanted blood to feature in her portrait and O’Brien agreed, assuming she’d bring along the fake stuff – but she turned up with a bucket of pig’s blood, instead. “A mum pushing her buggy came by with her dog, the dog went straight for the pig’s blood and I took the shot,” O’Brien recalls. “The photo has the dog looking up at the camera; it was one of those great moments in photography.”

The series began as a diploma project that garnered accolades at Massey University’s graduation showcase. “Professor Anne Noble said that for cliched subject matter, I’d managed to shoot it in a unique way – that there was something really powerful about the women’s legs, and I needed to finish this project.”

That was the catalyst for O’Brien’s book, Skateface, in which 35 roller-derby skaters including Lady Trample, Beth Wish, Hailstorm and Cinder Wreck share their candid stories. The collection took five years to complete and was released this year after a successful Kickstarter campaign. An exhibition of her work, Skateface, will run at The Grey Place in Auckland, 15-26 October – deliberately timed to coincide with the Rugby World Cup, to promote an alternative sport.

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