Deformer is Ed Templeton’s high quality, smoothly designed coffee table photo book. The volume also includes random notes, journal entries, and original art. A former pro skateboarder, Templeton’s bold and intensely personal vision documents his dysfunctional childhood and the dark side of growing up in melancholy Orange County. Templeton’s is a dark journey, yet one well worth taking.
Possessing a grotesquely natural eye for the camera lens, Templeton takes photos of a detached pigeon head, a little girl holding a gun, dying handicapped people traveling bare streets on little motorized carts, a dead dog, a punk wearing a germ mouth mask, a homeless person, a white power sign, teenagers smoking, essentially the foreboding, bleak nature of life itself.
It seems Catholicism or Christianity or some other religion that worships Christ is scorned and mocked throughout the book. Templeton’s photos make a striking statement about religion being forced on children, one that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. His photos, sometimes subtly, but usually in an in your face manner, have a throbbing energy and distinct ominous cloud aura.
Templeton’s wife, Deanna, is featured throughout Deformer. She is thanked at the end of the book as follows, “Finally, I would like to shower adoration on my wonderful wife, Deanna Templeton, whose bravery and constant support are the backbone of this project and my life.” It’s interesting to see how Templeton documents their strong trusting relationship through images instead of words.
One of the coolest pages of the book is nothing but ticket stubs. The names of the different bands that played each show are on every stub. This page gives rare insight into Ed’s and Deanna’s states of mind. When you know someone likes a certain band and you like that band too, of course music provides an excellent method of bonding. I identified with some bands and that made me feel closer to the book, and thus inevitably Ed and Deanna themselves.
Deformer opens with lyrics to the song “Hidden Wheel” (1986) by the band Rites of Spring.
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| chaoscott |
Is this the first time I’ve seen the size of these walls?
Is this the first time?
Yes.
Now I’m the angry son-
Everything I’ve learned was wrong
I’m the burning door-
Once I’m opened I can’t be closed.
The Rites of Spring quote kicks the book off with volcanic message. At the beginning of Deformer, Templeton explains the book as, “The shaping and misshaping effects of growing up a specimen in the suburban domestic incubator.” It would be tough to find a more apt description. Of course Deformer can be interpreted in multiple ways, yet of one fact there remains no debate, Templeton is a survivor.
