From the press release:
Bur­ton Snow­boards in con­junc­tion with Milk Gallery, VICE Mag­a­zine and pow­er­House Books, is pleased to present Winter’s Chil­dren by pho­tog­ra­pher, film­maker, and for­mer spon­sored snow­boarder Jim Man­gan. These provoca­tive snow­board­ing pho­tographs, first seen on the pages of counter-​culture insti­tu­tion VICE, are an irrev­er­ent com­men­tary on the indus­try and a play­ful hybrid of cul­tural doc­u­men­tary and nature pho­tog­ra­phy. A book based on the series, pub­lished by pow­er­House Books, will be included in the artist’s book col­lec­tion at The Museum of Con­tem­po­rary Art Chicago.

In 2010, Man­gan left an 11- ​year in the busi­ness side of snow­board­ing and lit out for the remote back­coun­try of Idaho’s Saw­tooth Moun­tains to recharge and redi­rect. He was accom­pa­nied by seven accom­plished snow­board­ers: his col­lege friend, Peter Suther­land, now a renowned pho­tog­ra­pher and artist, and ris­ing stars from the sport’s next gen­er­a­tion, includ­ing Laura Hadar and Alex Andrews. Away from the cor­po­rate spon­sors, the per­fectly man­i­cured ter­rain parks and half pipes, and the ever-​present audi­ence, the rid­ers lit­er­ally stripped away all arti­fice — along with their cloth­ing — in a pow­er­ful artis­tic state­ment that hon­ors the orig­i­nal roots of the sport.

The seven rid­ers soared naked and unin­hib­ited down empty slopes on vin­tage snow­boards from the 1980s, clad only in vibrant Native Amer­i­can blan­kets that con­trast with the stark win­ter land­scape. Man­gan cap­tured the action and the emo­tional inten­sity on an inten­tion­ally grainy 35 mm film reflec­tive of the ethos of snowboarding’s early years. “As I exited the snow­board­ing busi­ness, I wanted to recre­ate the feel­ings that orig­i­nally drew me to the sport,” explains Man­gan. “This project is an exag­ger­ated over­state­ment of those feel­ings.” Ulti­mately, for the pho­tog­ra­pher, the rid­ers, and the view­ers, Winter’s Chil­dren becomes a bap­tism, with the cold snow wash­ing away the neon filth of con­sumerism and serv­ing as a brac­ing reminder of snowboarding’s pure origins.

Open­ing Recep­tion, Film Pre­mier and Book Launch: Jan­u­ary 15, 7pm – 10pm Exhi­bi­tion Dates: Jan­u­ary 14 – Jan­u­ary 17, 10am – 6pm

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