Patrik Wallner’s Visualtraveling series opened the window to a world of skate spots that were previously unseen and widely unknown. Through his travel documentaries he opened up the eyes of millions of skaters around the world to new horizons of skateable terrain.
After being hyped on his projects and learning a lot through his films, we hit him up to find out how they all came together and were stoked he was down to join The No Comply Network.
Read Patrik’s interview to find out how he first started skating and shooting video and photography, growing up in Germany, his experiences skating and studying in New York, hanging out with Anthony Claravall and Billy Rohan, moving to London, his first skate video Translations, meeting John Tanner, creating Visualtraveling, getting Kenny Reed, Laurence Keefe, Michael Mackrodt and more on board for their trips, completing ‘The Loop’ around different countries in Europe and Asia, working with Thrasher and Transworld, his creative influences and inspirations, his behind the scenes stories from a selection of sick clips and moments from his films, keeping it rolling in North Korea, Madagascar, Russia and further afield, his tips to filmers on going to foreign countries and avoiding risky scenarios, living in Hong Kong, running his production company – Postcard Productions, his thoughts on making skate edits and shooting on film and digital, and his favourite skaters, styles, videos, photographers and spots around the world and lots more.
Read it below to find it all out for yourself.
Patrik in Mongolia: Shot for Visualtraveling.
Hey, What have you been upto recently Patrik?
I was just scanning some negatives. I just developed some film. I got this really expensive film from the UK, four years ago at the beginning of COVID. Have you ever heard of infrared Ektachrome?
I haven’t but tell me more about it. Sounds interesting.
Yeah, so it’s in its simplest form, anything you shoot with it that is green, it turns it pink. So there’s this really famous photographer called Richard Mosse. He shot a series in the Congo, and everything in the background is just pink and all these soldiers with guns and AK47s that he shot, he got these really striking portraits of them.
This film expired, though in 2007. I was bidding on eBay and I got two rolls from the UK, during COVID and then I developed it after having it in the fridge for three years, and it was a blank. It was 160 quid for the two of them. So I was a bit bummed out. But some other stuff turned out, so I’m scanning a bit of that.
Hong Kong: Shot by Patrik Wallner
Yeah, that’s the thing with working with film, when you develop things, they spontaneously work and create sick effects that you never expected or sometimes it could be blank or things can go badly.
Yeah, well, I think it was my fault this time. So this lady was selling them. She said she had it refrigerated for 15 years. I bought two rolls and I shot the first roll and it’s really sensitive, so you can’t even expose it to daylight.
When you take it out of the box, you have to do everything in the darkroom or in a dark bag, and then you even have to use this infrared filter on it. I developed the first roll and I got this really cool result of all these skyscrapers here in Hong Kong and all the greenery around it is all pink.
Then I was like, cool alright, I’ll shoot another roll. So I shot that roll, but instead of that I put it in my fridge, and then the electricity cut out. So I think for the two weeks that electricity was out, it rotted in the fridge. So it’s a really particular film. So when I developed it this morning it’s just nothing. So, I’m a little bummed but as you said, it’s just part of the analogue game, right?
I know that feeling of when things that should work and usually work don’t and mess up your plans.
We take it for granted sometimes. I mean, we always expect everything to work. But yeah, you take it away and then, you miss it.
Yeah, definitely.
Maybe the refrigerator is meant for food, not for my film! It could be a sign to get back to digital. I don’t know. I can never wrap my head around if I should still keep shooting analogue. It’s fun and I like it, but it’s so expensive. All the chemicals that I’m potentially breathing in. I have a kid now too, so I have to put all the chemicals on the balcony high up too.
So you’re in Hong Kong right now. Are you an official Hong Kong resident?
Yeah, I’m a resident, but technically not a permanent resident yet. I’m actually a couple of months away from getting that. Hong Kong is one of the few places out here in the East, at least that makes at a bit easier. It’s just set in place like that from British times. It is easier to get permanent residency here, compared to other countries here, like for example Japan.
Laurence Keefe, who came on Visualtraveling trips and is originally from England runs the Adidas skate program out in Japan now.
Right. You lived in London in England for a while right? how did you meet John Tanner?
I lived in London from autumn 2008 till winter 2010. So I had like two years. I went to the same class as John Tanner. So that’s how we got to know each other. We started off at university. We were in an orientation class for one of these photo classes we had.
Then literally a couple weeks later I was like, ‘Do you want to go on a skate trip on the Trans-Siberian railroad?’ He’s like, yeah, let’s do it! Then we did the trip the following summer after that. But I feel we were filming a lot in London around that time.
John Tanner, Kickflip in Moscow, Russia: Shot by Patrik
Where did you skate the most when you lived in London?
Elephant and Castle. I loved that little manual pad.
Yeah, it’s a shame that spot is gone now, it was sick!
It was my favourite thing on the planet.
My battle on that Manny Pad was Switch Nose Manual Fakie Tre Out and I always stomped it with one foot, but never got the two feet on to this day. My shoulder was feeling good a couple years back when Stephen Khou, who runs Helas, was here with a VX1000, so I was hyped that maybe I could land it now a decade and a half later?
Step Khou, Back Tail, Hong Kong: Shot by Patrik
Steph used to live in London too.
Nice yeah, he’s the homie from Shanghai. He’s so international. People are like, yeah, he’s my French homie. He’s my Shanghai homie. He’s my London homie. I feel like he’s lived almost everywhere in the major, big metropolitan cities, east and west.
Stephen Khou: Shot by Patrik
But yeah, Steph came out with a VX. He’s so good with the VX. He knows exactly how the MK1 works, where to go, how to point it up. I mean, he’s pretty much a filmer. I got so juiced, and then I dislocated my shoulder and I had surgery. But at one point I was like, should I try this battle again? But I’m in my mid-30s now, and I’m like, I don’t know if I still got it in me to try that trick, but I think it’s still looming around.
Definitely. You got it. So, what’s your full name Patrik?
Patrik Wallner.
You don’t have any middle names?
Albin. I think it was my grandpa’s brother who was in the Hungarian Revolution and disappeared. So my grandma gave me his middle name. Every time I get a visa for any of these countries, I always have to write it out.
Right. So where did you grow up?
So I would say my family and I were in Hungary, almost every holiday or school break or summer, winter holidays, but my parents defected from Hungary when it was still Communist and they went to Germany. My mom had a few German relatives who pretty much said they would host us. So they pretty much defected, packed their bags one day before I was born, pretended they were just going to East Germany and then crossed the border.
I was born in West Germany, so I got citizenship. Then the Berlin Wall fell apart pretty much two years later. Since then I was pretty much raised in Germany. My mother tongue is Hungarian though. I went to school in Germany. Then my uncle had a rent control place in New York. So he always said to my family, oh, you guys are more than welcome to swing by.
Around that time, my sister was doing really bad in English classes, So my mom and I and my sister went out to New York and stayed at my uncle’s place for a year and that’s how I learned English. That was also the start of my back-and-forth with America. We ended up staying a bit longer and then ended up moving to Long Island and that’s kind of where I started skating.
So, your parents are Hungarian but you were conceived in Germany, so you have a German passport? So you speak German, Hungarian and English?
Yeah. After I lived in London for a while, I lived in Spain, as anyone would, that was drawn to the mecca of skateboarding in the early 2000s, right after I finished up high school, and then pretty much after that, it was just Manifest Destiny that took me towards the East.
Then I learned a bit of Chinese as well when I was in university in the UK and so I speak a bit of Mandarin as well. Now I live in Hong Kong. I can’t really speak Cantonese, so I can’t really use my Mandarin too much here either. But here you can get by with English.
John Tanner, The Great Wall of China
Sick. Just to take a step back, learning to skate in Long Island sounded really interesting. What was that like?
My other uncle from my mom’s side invited us right before 9/11 on a holiday in Croatia. Along the highway, we stopped at a gas station and then there was some toy store and he bought me a skateboard.
Then later I just started trying to learn how to Ollie and stuff on this small island in Croatia. So that’s where it started. There I saw some kid Kickflip and I remember it stuck with me. I was like “Oh shit, I gotta learn this!”. This looks amazing.
So I went back to Long Island, I was practising it and then just to wrap up this, this little coincidence like 20 years later, I’m at a film festival in Croatia – The Vladimir Film Festival – and I got interviewed by one of the organisers, prior to a premiere that I had there.
I’m on stage for this premiere and then the organisers come up and they’re like, well you remember Patrik, you said in this interview that you started skating on this small island called Rab in Croatia.
I’m like, yeah? Then he’s like, well…the only other person on that island that summer was our friend Marco here, who was one of the organisers. Everyone started clapping and I was like, what!?
So I potentially might have met the person whose kickflip I first ever saw and he’s one of the Vladimir Film Festival creators. I might have met the dude who inspired me to skate, which is cool. It was a full circle moment.
The fact he was organising the film festival at which you were being celebrated and presenting your latest work is next level.
At first I was in shock, then denial, I went through it all. I’m like, no, it can’t be you! But then I’m like, yeah, I guess it could be. Then it’s just like, oh, let’s just celebrate. It was right before we premiered this Cuba piece. So it was really fun. The film festival was hosted at an ex-Soviet bowling alley. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to this film festival, but it’s really good.
Next year I want to premiere something there. It’s always really fun. They pick really cool locations all over the place in these different towns around that little peninsula of Croatia.
They throw really cool parties and it’s very homegrown and grassroots. They come up with wild ideas. I think one of the ideas was to have a photo exhibition under the water. So people need to put on goggles and then swim underneath and check out your work under the water. Everyone there, Philip, Marco, Oleg, they’re all good dudes.
I hope they’re gonna come through on that one. It might have been just a wild idea, but yeah, there are so many funny stories. Tito, the former dictator of Yugoslavia, had this little island right next to where the Vladimir Festival is usually held and there are zebras there. I think a skate team once went there and crashed the golf cars attempting to try and find the zebras, but then a tree crashed on them. I don’t know if it’s true. There are so many urban myths and legends surrounding the event. There’s just so much cool stuff around it.
Was it that you already had a point-and-shoot camera and you were interested in shooting skate photos or was it through skating that you were thinking, I’m seeing stuff that I want to document and, maybe I should get a video camera? Which one came first and what got you into doing both
I think the early videos around that time always had a lot of stills. Cliche ‘Bon Appetit’ definitely satisfied my hunger for skateboarding and photography. French Fred just did such a good job with all the 8mm footage and also embedding analogue photography into the intros and throughout the whole piece.
So when I was in my mid-teens a video camera came first. I was shooting video with my mom’s camera. Then I promised my mom I would stop smoking cigarettes if she got me an 8mm camera. She had a relative who had a camera.
So then I had 8mm for a while, but that was too expensive. Then I found an analogue camera and then I got the VX2100.
So that was his weird random order of events, but all of them complemented each other. With still photography, I got more into composition and with the VX, I had to learn more about fisheye usage because I wasn’t shooting too much fisheye back then. I think I only got a fisheye photo lens in 2007.
So I was playing around with all three of them to figure out what I wanted to do. When I was still in high school I had some photo classes that would give me a bunch of black and white rolls for free every week. Especially since a teacher liked me, she would hook me up with a lot of free photo paper and stuff. So I would already start developing in the dark room and be figuring out the process.
How did you develop your photography and filmmaking skills
I feel like I learned through a lot of errors pretty much. I noticed I could sell photos quite early on because I was surrounding myself with skaters that were really good and I could also start shooting photos of them besides just filming them.
Then when I moved to Barcelona, I got cosy with the European Adidas team. Then I got asked by Torsten Frank to start filming for the Adidas video Diagonal but on the side, I was also shooting photos. The German magazines at that time were quite numerous out there. Meaning like we had I think four mags running at once back then.
I think France had a few too. The UK had a bunch. Yeah, obviously Hungary had zero at that time. There were a lot of outlets and as long as I figured out Front Blunts kind of look good and are easy to shoot. You have multiple fractions of a second to capture that one Front Crooks, so I was just slowly figuring out which side to take photos from.
Walker Ryan, Nosegrind, Havana Cuba
I got thrown straight into the deep end because a year or two later I’m already travelling with Kenny Reed and I’m like oh, shit I can’t fuck this up because Transworld have asked me to shoot an article in North Korea.
So I’m like, okay, Patrik, figure this out. Get a medium format camera, 35mm is maybe too small. That can’t be a two-page spread.
So I started taking more photos with a medium format which had 120mm film and I got kind of cosy with that one. So I just kept trying to figure out how I could do it. I wanted to be a photographer but I also wanted to be a filmmaker. So it was always those two clashing at each other.
Okay, that’s understandable, its not a bad conflict to have though.
Then fast forward three years, I’m on a trip, and Thrasher asked me to shoot a full article. But I’m also the filmmaker on the trip. So I was juggling two of my favourite things, but I’m stressing myself out because, at that point, I already have flashes carrying, a HDSLR, with five lenses and then an analogue camera and then a bunch of digital cameras and flashes.
Sounds like a workout
But also just arriving at random airports, you know! I remember arriving in Tehran, and I was stressing out. I’m like, are they gonna be suspicious? We’re always checking the box for being a tourist. But, you know, in the end, are they not suspicious that we’re actually doing work here?
So, yeah, there was a lot of paranoia at that time too, especially going to Central Asian countries. I remember first going to Uzbekistan was a scary one. They would write down all the cameras you have. North Korea was obviously the worst. They would write down everything. You can’t leave anything behind or you go to jail.
Yeah, it wasn’t easy. I think I’m good at juggling, I like to do multiple things at a time, and it stresses me out. But then I always like that I have different types of mediums.
Have you ever been conflicted when you needed to film a clip of a trick but also needed to shoot a photo of it at the same time?
I have had a couple of times when Walker Ryan was yelling at me because we’re in Istanbul and he’s Switch Flipping over a Hubba. But he’d already broke his board. We got the photo but didn’t get the footage, but because I took the photo first. There’s a lot of those but that was not totally my fault. I think I invited Jonathan Mehring on that trip and Dan Zvereff, who could have shot too, but they didn’t make it because it was too last minute on that one.
From the trips after that, I just had a photographer come with me because it was just getting a bit too much and I just wanted to focus on filming a bit more. Also, because at that time, in the mid-2010s, I was really focusing on Visualtraveling, I just wanted to finish this loop idea that I had.
What was the loop?
The first initial idea was to loop around Europe and the Asian continent clockwise. That was the first thing, all with local transportation. So either being on a bus, a train, a motorcycle or whatnot. So that was the first idea. But then after we almost completed that, I was like, alright, let me try to go to every country in Europe and Asia.
Then I did a list, and it ended up being exactly, 101, which just sounded good too. I’m like, okay, this is maybe doable.
I looked ahead, and I thought, I have three more years. I think I can do it. There are a couple of countries missing here, a couple of countries missing there. Let me try to fill in the blanks and try to get some photos that portray borderlines, skateboarding, nature, religion, and cultural events, and then make a photo book out of it. So that was ‘The Eurasia Project’.
After rewatching 10,000 kilometers, the Trans-Siberian Railway skate trip film, there were loads of great tricks and travel moments but the one that stood out for me is Tanner’s Back Smith Back Three Out on that ledge. Do you remember what that trick was like to film?.
Yeah, Tanner was exceptional at that time. Just the way he carried himself, the way he Kickflipped, his pushes, I was so fortunate to be in the same photo class with him at University because we just bonded quite fast.
I got really lucky because I didn’t have any friends at that time in London and he introduced me to everyone, to Henry Edwards Wood and Lucien Clarke and all the now Palace guys so I had people to work with, you know?
For sure. Who were you filming with that Henry introduced you to?
I think I was filming a lot with Steph Morgan for his This Time Tomorrow part. I think we were out a lot whenever I was in town because I was usually lured by Kenny Reed and some other guys more towards the East. But whenever I was in London for uni, I would try to go out with those guys and film a lot.
But I remember when we were in Siberia. So that town, Yekaterinburg, where he did the Back Smith Back Three Out. We had just gone from the western part of Russia to a more rural area. There’s no pure divide, but there is technically, an imaginary border between Europe and Asia there.
Ok, I didn’t know that.
So that town was quite cool because there were a lot of spots. Laurence Lipslid this really long, curved ledge, and everyone was on fire because we were sitting on a train the day prior for 31 hours, and this was our first stop.
So I think we all gave all we had in Moscow because there was just so much marble. Then half of the crew hadn’t been to China before at that point, so we didn’t even know how much more marble would be coming our way.
Laurence, Nose Manual, Baku, Azerbijan
But I think once we got to Yekaterinburg, it was just really great on the first day. I think when Tanner got that Back Smith Back Three Out we just knew, alright, this is going good. We already got some really cool footage on the train.
We just met Kirill Korobkov for the first time, who became our guide and one of my closest friends and everything just felt right. We’re doing this, not many people have skated in this town before, and everything felt new.
I just have this vague memory that Mike Carroll did a Back Smith Back 360 to my knowledge at that time. So Tanner just did a trick that Mike Carroll did, maybe for Fully Flared. It definitely stood out.
Everyone was in their 20s and had energy, and I was really motivated to film everyone. So I think I was filming mainly from morning to night.
In Yekaterinburg, we got off the train, and there was one taxi driver just waiting at the train station. We’re like, oh, we’re staying in the hotel next to the circus. The taxi driver said, okay, I will take you all. We said, well, there are 12 people, though. Can we take the other taxis behind us? He’s like, no! We were like, what? What do you mean, no? We’re gonna take three taxis, 4 people per taxi.
Then the taxi driver got out because he saw us putting luggage into the second taxi and the first taxi driver punched the second taxi driver in the face. We’re like, oh, well, welcome to Siberia. It was like the Wild West. You take one 30-hour train ride east from Moscow, and it just gets a lot more rural and rugged. It was just like every day something new is happening and we’re just with a good crew. So, yeah, it was good times.
Between Laurence, Tanner. Michael Mackrodt, and later Walker Ryan and Kenny, you amassed a solid crew. Did you all meet organically or were your sponsors getting involved early on?
Yeah, I was filming for my first full-length film called Translations in 2007 and 2008 and made DVDs and was able to sell them.
Then I noticed, okay, I can kind of not live off of this, but I can finance trips from this because you could print a DVD for a pound or two, you sell it to distributors for five, and then, they sell at that time, I think it was like 14.99 or something. Japan was buying it and some other countries. So I was able to finance this trip because it was quite expensive.
Luckily all these other guys were able to get their sponsors to help out or they worked for it.
I mean, at that time, Laurence was teaching, so he saved up for a year for this trip and so did half of the other guys. So the thing is, no one took anything for granted. It wasn’t this big sponsor that paid for it or, fast forward 10 years and Red Bull pays for all our flights or Transworld or whatnot. At this time it was, everyone’s hard-earned money and we tried to stay with local skaters, in local areas so we don’t have to pay so much for hotels.
As I said in Yekaterinburg, we stayed in a hotel next to the circus where they would charge the Americans more because apparently Americans break beds. That was their justification for ripping off the Americans because they’re known to be bed breakers!
So, yeah, we all saved up for this trip and then we all wanted to do this. Everyone who I met and invited on that trip had some kind of a wanderlust to go into the unknown and wanted to be on long train rides. There was no black sheep who complained too much or didn’t want to do this or that.
Obviously after a couple weeks, considering that this trip was actually a nine week trip, which I don’t think these days is that normal anymore, we obviously got on each other’s nerves a bit.
There were some places when half of the team had to sleep on the ground or on the couch. We’re all trying to figure out who’s going to be playing the hierarchy, who’s older, who gets to grab the bed, you know, all that game.
Then, half the people didn’t know the other half too. So I think most of us met each other in Barcelona prior-ish. But not everyone because I think Dan Cates came on that trip and I only met him two times before that. He was just a friend of John Tanner and he seemed funny and that he really wanted to do this. I was like, yeah, sure, come along.
So it was more spontaneous, kind of whoever wanted to do it and tag along because other people wanted to join.
But then it got more difficult. Getting a Russian visa at that point wasn’t that easy as well. You had to get an invitation letter. Getting a Mongolian visa wasn’t as easy as it is now as well which is on arrival these days. So there was a bit more work that had to be done for all of us to start this trip. But in the end it just became that crew. Then we followed it up with the Mandalay Express and a bunch of other trips afterwards with he core crew as well.
Michael Mackrodt can put a line together anywhere and you would go on trips where it looked like there were no lines, so it seemed like he was a great fit
You can put anything on Michael Mackrodt‘s plate and he’ll somehow figure out a line. I think his secret is that he’s got all his flatground tricks on dial and then, he just does the math, figures it out. He’s got really good manual and ledge control.
He was a perfect skater for these trips and a good friend to come along because he was able to always do the lines that show a bit more of the location because, some skaters like to focus more on the single tricks.
Michael Mackrodt, Melon Transfer
But I personally always love filming lines more because I’m always all about what is in the backdrop. I’m always thinking, is there anything that can define the culture in the backdrop? Is there anything in the background that can pinpoint out something that is more unique to this culture, the architecture, some religious tones that can be visible when you film a line that you don’t really notice too often when you just get a single trick?
How did you come up with the idea to do the Trans-Siberian trip for your 10,000 Kilometers film?
We brewed up this whole Trans-Siberian idea because Michael heard somewhere that they’re gonna stop the train. Then we believed that, we gotta do it now before this train stops. But obviously, it was not true because it’s such a vital network for Russia to get from east to west of the country. So they were never going to shut down that train ride. But luckily we did it at the right time.
Kenny did the trip there with Jonathan Mehring prior but I haven’t heard of anyone else really doing it. I was surprised too, because there are so many crews out there and it’s really fun.
But I’ve noticed not many teams want to do these long train rides. Even though I really enjoy it, because they just give you a forced break because if you’re still in the city or in an urban space, you’re still tempted to get more footage. But then when you’re on these long train rides, you can only have a beer, play cards and read a book. That’s all. It’s like a little prison for relaxation.
Then you look outside, you see the scenery change. So it became kind of a theme for us. We just all loved long train rides.
I love flying. But during the Visualtraveling days, it was all about being on trains and buses.
John Tanner, Laurence Keefe and Michael Mackrodt in Omsk, Russia: Shot by Patrik
Yeah, definitely, it looks like they led to a lot of conversations that you documented with people who were part of those different countries that I think gave your films more depth as well. It shows a different element to what you’re doing, not as a pure skate documentary, but also cultural.
There was this period of time when there was no focus on storytelling in skating. I feel like especially around the time when I was doing Visualtraveling, there were only On Videos that had really good storytelling. They were the ones that influenced me a lot too.
One of my first videos was 411VM ‘Around the World’ Issue One with Kenny being in India.
Then we literally returned to that cover of the VHS eight years later on the Holy Cow trip which took us from Bangladesh to Sri Lanka. So my mind was a little bit blown too. Thinking of being in high school and looking at Transworld’s cover and Kenny’s on it, and then all of a sudden I’m organising a trip with Kenny on it. So it was a little bit of a shock, but we became good friends and it became normal after a while.
I think there was just this little hole in the types of skate videos that people were making at the time and luckily people were into it; into long-form documentary. I didn’t coin it, but I heard someone else calling it “skatumentaries” and people were drawn to it.
So until the whole DVD era was over, I made three DVDs until it moved all online. Those were really fun. I liked setting up the menu and adding subtitles. Japan really loved DVDs, so I was trying to focus it towards them as well and have a global premiere.
I was really fortunate that there was this need and people were itching to see the unknown and not just the typical cities in China, like Shenzhen or Shanghai or Beijing.
I guess in between 2007 and 2012, when you started, this process of going to these places, there was still this huge unknown, it was rare to see any skateboarding in Asia.
I wanted to fill in the blanks. I’ve discovered a lot. I’ve travelled a lot in Europe during the filming forTranslation and then also in the East. But it’s always this grey area, like the ‘Stans.
Then once you hit one of the ‘Stans, what’s next door? Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, I want to see them all and any country that used to be part of the Soviet Union, and it wasn’t so easy back in the day. You couldn’t just go on your phone and find out much information, we had to go there for ourselves. We just wanted to find marble or cool-looking backdrops and film. Leave our mark, document what’s around it, document the culture and also feel it.
Luckily afterwards, when I got to go back, during my four or five years of doing stuff for Red Bull and filming docs for them, I was able to go back to places and go a bit deeper.
We went back to Kazakhstan in 2016 and we went to the Caspian Sea and went to places that no other skaters had gone before. I think anytime you keep going more and more remote, you’re gonna find yourself in situations that are going to be unique. You’re going to meet people that are going to be very genuine. I just love to document.
Everybody who watched your work lived that experience through the documentaries.
That’s awesome. That makes me feel so good. I’m glad I was able to make this portal, this window for the skate community to see what’s on the other side.
Some of these places are really hard to get to. Like multiple times we got blacklisted to enter Turkmenistan. Then finally on my third time, when I used my Hungarian passport, I was able to go. A lot of these places, it took a lot of work to get there, it’s a bit easier now, but also a bit more difficult. We got lucky that we did it in the 2010s, politically.
Like, Russia wasn’t rooted in war. Going now to Iran or Russia or any place that’s actively at war is much more difficult now.
So, I find it also very fortunate that we got to do it at that time. We were all young, in your 20s. You don’t have kids yet. You don’t have a wife yet. So you’re there for yourself and you want to experience these things. Now it’s a bit more difficult when you look at risk and have loved ones at home, so you don’t want to risk it as much anymore.
What was the sketchiest scenario that you found yourself in?
We got lucky so many times, honestly, on a trip prior to this other example, we were skating this North Korean statue in Namibia which was a war memorial.
These soldiers with AK47s were saying, yeah, it’s fine for us to skate. So we’re skating underneath it. Then after we’re exiting by car, this lady at the toll was like, oh, you did something bad. You woke up the dead, there’s dead people buried there.
I’m like, okay, what do you mean…knowing it’s a bribe. Then she ended up asking for the equivalent of five USD. I was like, okay, all right, I got you. You got change for a hundred? But no, that was like an easy one. So many times we got away with things and in sketchy situations especially a couple in North Korea.
But I would say the one that scared me a little bit was in 2019, going to Kenya with Jakko Ojanen, with Jackson Pilz and a crew. We were skating behind a police station but we had no idea. Then Jackson knocked over this pole, and we started filming this like pole jam. Then all of a sudden these police officers with AK47s showed up and they already seemed a little bit drunk.
They made us walk in twos, going to the police station while holding hands, pretty much sitting us all down and saying, you guys are going to go to jail for being terrorists. You were filming behind a police station. We’re looking for evidence now. They were going through all our cameras. Luckily at that moment, I put my camera away really fast and when they were asking to take out all the cameras, I left it in my backpack and I didn’t raise my hand.
That one felt sketchy because we were just all sitting there, we were thinking like, damn, how are we gonna get out of this one? They didn’t even really want to take a bribe. They wanted to take us to jail.
Luckily, hours later, I don’t think they found a photo that fully showed the police station that we were shooting there. So Sam had to pay a bribe of over a thousand USD which is a lot for Africa. That will pay for multiple salaries.
So, yeah that one made me realise, you can be in the wrong situation and, maybe you can’t get out. I don’t really want to pay bribes either. I don’t want to partake in that. But it’s hard, you don’t want to go to jail. Yeah, especially somewhere in the middle of Africa.
Oddly enough, though, after we got released and the next day we went to a safari because we were all pretty bummed, and we just wanted to get away, get out of Kenya. Then we saw this huge billboard on the highway, and it said, ‘December 6, 2019, Anti Corruption Day’.
The day we got arrested was the only day they were not meant to. Out of 365 days, 364 days of the year corruption is overlooked. But then the one day they shouldn’t do it, that’s the one day they plundered us. That was a recent one that felt sketchy.
There were a lot of little moments on the Visualtraveling days as well. Especially in North Korea, there was a time when one of our friends on the trip lost the photo camera. So that’s instant jail time and we couldn’t find it anymore for him. So he was already writing a letter to his mom saying farewell, like accepting he’s gonna go to jail. But luckily we had an undeclared GoPro and we were able to switcharoo at the border. So there’s a lot of these sketchy situations.
What sucks being part of the media crew is the suspicions of being a terrorist or a spy. All this stuff is always scary, especially nowadays, like, some so many journalists go to jail for espionage or something, and you can never really prove what we’re doing.
There’s something about skateboarding that’s so mystifying to people who’ve never seen it that they assume that you’re some kind of performing act or something. But do you have any advice for people who are trying to visit far off destinations about ways that they should keep safe when filming and skateboarding?
It depends on where you go. Luckily Asia isn’t as bad as South America when it comes to getting robbed.
I was always very paranoid and I always liked to try to keep my wits about myself with the camera gear I had. But I feel like there’s no recipe really. Like you just kind of have to get lucky and you gotta always be focused on what’s going around you.
One time like on a long-distance train ride from Moscow down to where we go to Southern Russia on the ‘Around the Black Sea’ trip. I was charging my laptop on a bench outside of the cabin where we slept. I heard a door shut and I looked and my laptop was gone and I ran after and this guy grabbed it, this huge guy with Russia written on his tracksuit.
I was able to wrestle it back from him. But in the meantime my screen cracked.
So for the following years I would travel around with an external screen on my Windows computer laptop. But there’s definitely been robberies and all that stuff. It’s just part of the game. It’s smart I guess to insure things. That’s maybe one piece of advice. So if you can go to the local police station and get a report, then maybe you can get your money back.
At least I’ve used that once when I’ve damaged lenses and stuff.
But I think always just talk to the locals there, figure out the zones where you shouldn’t go. Like in most big African cities, you don’t want to be outside at night, so just avoid nighttime unless you’re with the right people that can take you to places, leave your camera stuff at the hotel.
However, that has also panned out badly once when we got robbed from the safe. It just happens, can’t really avoid it. But I think best, the most important thing is just to make sure you’re safe. Your freedom is most important.
Visualtraveling Crew, Avenue of the Baobabs, Madagascar: Shot by Patrik
But travelling with a skateboard also brings out a bit of empathy sometimes. Like we’ve gotten a lot of free meals, a lot of invites and good conversation, too, because we’re on ground level. We’re not in the fucking Hilton, we’re down by the dumpsters, grinding a little ledge. So, yeah, I feel like we lucked out a lot of the time, for sure, but I think it’s a lot about. Just karma points, hopefully.
Also being in big groups, it always helps being in big groups – especially international groups is good and not to be stuck with people from your culture. When we travel in Africa, we bring a homie from Zimbabwe. Or Bring a skater from South Africa. Then at least you have people from the continent. Then you have friends, you have connections. They can teach you a bit of the vibes too, and then it usually pans out. As long as you go in with a good attitude.
Yeah, I’m more worried about transportation sometimes, like sketchy bus rides or having taxi drivers fall asleep. I’ve had some really crazy rides before in some countries. That stuff can get scary. You just gotta knock on wood and hope for the best.
You mentioned Bon Appetit but was there another skate video you had on rotation when you were a kid? Or were there like other videos that you watched? I know you mentioned 411 and On Video too, but was there anything else that got your mind ticking?
Photosynthesis was a big one that shaped me a lot too and Mosaic obviously, around a little bit later.
That video was an instigator for me to go to New York City. So I got a VX for my 18th birthday. I was really fortunate that my dad saved up for this camera. He saw that I wanted to do this professionally. I went to New York City and I met Billy Rohan which also changed my life a bit.
Yeah, I heard he backflipped off a car in front of some police and some bad stuff happened related to that
I would stay on the weekends on his couch and I without even really knowing how to film with the VX. I had a Mark II fisheye and I got tossed into the deep end of the pool with Billy Rohan. He did this Fakie 270 Backside Nosebluntslide 270 out. I filmed it with a long lens rolling. I showed it to Anthony Claravall at that time who happened to be in New York filming with Quim Cardona and Billy.
Then Anthony’s like, you know what? You can probably film for 411. Those words changed my life a little bit, because at that point, I was still living in Germany.
So I hopped back to Germany for a couple years, and I was there, and then I was like, I’m just gonna move back to the US. My dad was working in Long Island. I realised I could transfer my school credits to the high school over there and then wrap up this academic life and I can move to Barcelona. That was the goal back then.
To get back to your question about DVDs. I would have Photosynthesis, and I had the VX and I was filming basketball games and then making money to go into New York City every weekend, and I would go to all these spots that Photosynthesis had. Like the ones that Anthony Pappalardo was skating and Jason Dill and Tim O’Connor.
When I was 14, I was really into East Coast skate spots when I first started. Before Quartersnacks was called Quartersnacks it used to be called 50-50 skateboarding. Then they would show where these spots were. I would find them and then try to maybe Ollie down some stairs or set down my dad cam and just film myself at these spots. But afterwards, I noticed I like filming other skaters more. So that’s when I started shifting more from skating to filming.
Yeah
And then Billy was a big instigator because he was at that time, the King of New York. He was doing everything and I was like his personal cameraman. So when Harold Hunter died, rest in peace, he was like, can you film his funeral.
Then he would be like Patrik, can you come here? I have this idea. We gotta shoot in this cinema. We gotta all dress up like ninjas!
He was full of ideas, and I was there and had time, and I was motivated, and I was filming with him and his friends, and I was just roped into the New York skate scene at that time.
I think Photosynthesis was kind of like the bait that got me over to New York City and then meeting Billy and meeting Anthony Claravall, who told me I can film for a profession, was the big, big move back then.
How did you get Kenny on board and what’s it been like exploring countries with him over the years?
It was great. I randomly bumped into him in Barcelona. We exchanged email addresses and we had this email relationship at first, where I remember I was in my dorm room in London, in between filming lines with Tanner or writing an essay about Hitchcock movies, I was getting these emails in my inbox from Kenny Reed, and he’s like, hey, I’m just in Kyrgyzstan right now, sending me photos from his digicam of insane spots.
Kenny Reed, Nose Manual in Tbilisi, Georgia: Shot by Patrik
At that time, I started downloading a lot of documentaries and getting really fascinated about trying to understand. Why is the Middle East so complicated? Why? What’s the difference between Sunni and Shia? Why has there always been trouble with Israel, Palestine? Like, these are all things I started questioning.
I went to film school, but I was more interested in geopolitics, more or less. Then I had someone like Kenny, emailing me, once a month saying hey and asking me how am I doing? I was telling him, I wanted to do these kinds of trips.
I guess maybe he saw the flame in me, that I was ready to go anywhere, not the typical skate locations. I had this yearning for nooks and corners and countries that don’t exist – or are partially recognised – and had this desire to go to places where I think he saw the value in me and also saw that I can film and take photos.
So it was good for him because he at that time always needed ads. So we would go to Georgia and we tried to go to Abkhazia, and it was mainly about shooting a photo for him and I had to remind him, don’t forget about the documentary.
I would always point the camera in his face and be like, Kenny, where are we? He would always be like, oh, god, Patrik, can you stop this? He’d already done it at that point enough, for other documentaries. I was in my early 20s and he was, like, inching into his 30s, and he’s trying to get ads that he needs for work while I was testing out my documentary life.
But I was really focusing on videos. We would always come back home with a couple photos, some nice portraits, and then the mags would obviously, at that time, eat up anything Kenny-related. They loved Kenny and everyone wanted to feature him. So I was able to get a cool four or six pages in Transworld in 2010 shot in Pyongyang. That was my first big magazine exposure at that time, like an American magazine.
We went to North Korea together and I did all the back-end work. I got all the permissions and had to do a lot of manoeuvring to make that trip happen. In the end we were there and we got a push and a photo because that’s all we got away with in the first trip. It was a little disappointing. We had one Tre Flip photo too, but Kenny wasn’t in top shape because I think he was hurt as well.
Kenny Reed, Wallride to Fakie, Ankara, Turkey: Shot by Patrik
We went to Bangladesh afterwards. All places that he’s had on his radar and places that were necessary for me, for my goal for doing this loop, this clockwise journey around the Eurasian supercontinent.
So I think our mindsets aligned and we just kept it going. There was no stopping. I didn’t finish my degree, I just went to school for two years and then I moved out to Thailand and was filming for a skate shop there called Preduce. But I was pretty much just going on trips then.
So I was located in Southeast Asia and focused on doing trips around that region and getting people to come out and that’s where I met Walker Ryan too. Then we became really close friends and started travelling even more.
So it all started by meeting Kenny at a bar in Barcelona and then going on one trip. Then after one trip and a 30-hour train ride later, most people become friends. If not then, the personalities don’t mesh. We became good friends, we still chat to this day and we try to cross roads. Like I just saw him in San Francisco recently with his kid and it was really fun.
Hopefully I get to shoot more photos with him. It’s been a while since I got a Tre Flip with Kenny Reed. I’m ready.
You mentioned Walker Ryan as well. Was there anybody else who you feel has, like, been a sort of core part of, like, a lot of the journeys and trips that you’ve been on?
Yeah, Walker and Kenny were the big ones that I would travel around with a lot. Laurence Keefe came on most of the Visualtraveling trips, and then we had a period when Gosha Konyshev was always ready to come and go. Even during the midst of the Houthi rebellion in Yemen. That was quite sketchy.
Gosha Konyashev, Frontside Boardslide
How did you first meet Laurence and get him involved in Visualtraveling?
Yeah, it was a simple invite. As simple as just filming a line with him in Barcelona. I’m like, I like this guy, he’s funny. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s just always laughing and keen for any adventure, perfect fit for Visualtraveling stuff.
He rode a bike from Northern California to the south and took crazy bus rides along Eastern Europe. So he already had that drive to go deeper. So after the Trans-Siberian railroad trip, he never said no. He was just a ‘yes’ man. He was just down for anything.
It organically led to him teaching English to becoming one of the main guys at Adidas that runs the skate program, especially in the East, in Japan. I was fortunate enough that, he hired me for the introduction to the team which was called ‘The Splits’ that we filmed in Japan, which was my first project that was outside of the documentary sphere again. I was just in awe when I had Daewon Song and Mark Gonzales at the premiere in Tokyo.
It just made me realise holy shit, I love this storytelling aspect, but I’ve done it so much now I want to do something a bit more creative. We had a bit of room to come up with a concept with this split screen idea and it had a really good reception. The clip has over 1.5 million views and everyone seems to like it.
We created something really different where I’m like okay, you know what, I gotta stop doing just the travel storytelling aspect. These days, I’m working on more long-form documentaries. So I’m taking a lot more time now. One project I am spending most time with, we are focusing on upcoming kids in the skate sphere who are aiming to become pro.
I’m doing side stuff with Nestor Judkins‘ skate NGO called Salad Days. So we were going back to Bhutan to tell a little story.
Nowadays, I enjoy the luxury of being able to go back with different cameras, maybe a different mindset, something else at hand or learning from your first trip that you can shoot something a bit differently, in different ways you didn’t quite see on your first trip.
That’s all started from working with Laurence on ‘The Splits.’ Just noticing that, you gotta take your time with stuff these days. Especially nowadays the Internet, everyone consumes everything so fast so you can’t just put out raw stuff. You can, but I like to polish it up, tell a bit of a different angle or do something else to it to also appeal to non-skaters. It’s always fun to have my wife appreciate some of the films.
Usually it’s the other way around for most skate filmers. It’s like they’re just banging out edits non-stop and then they think about making films and it’s funny that you were just like actually I want to just go back to filming tricks.
I think I go through phases. I haven’t used my Widelux photo camera and I just packed it out and I love it. Even like the 16mm during COVID I got obsessed with it again and started developing at home and I feel like I never get too cosy with one toy. I just need to revolve around different mediums.Otherwise, I just get too bored.
I got too over-saturated with doing skateumentaries for almost a decade where I needed to step away for a second. Covid happened. So I had to step away. I couldn’t travel anymore. I was still in the midst of doing a season of filming in different parts of Africa, but we had to can it and abandon the idea and I shifted my focus to Hong Kong.
Last year, I finished a black & white series of photographs, all shot and self-developed and scanned here in Hong Kong during the COVID lockdown. Hong Kong just went through the most turmoil times losing its democracy, followed up with three years of anxiety.
But then also in the midst of that, I bought myself a VX again with my old Mark I fisheye that I found in the attic and started filming with the VX again. I don’t know. I feel like I find joy in revolving around different mediums. Just keep your brain active with different kinds of formats too. It’s never too good to get too cosy with one tool. Gotta sharpen all those blades.
Totally. I run a production house here in Hong Kong and sometimes we get asked to do commercials for different shoe brands. I have a shoot tomorrow for Cathay Pacific, the national airline here.
One of the main things that sparked my first message to contact you recently was the Madars said you filmed his 50-50 on that handrail that went into the ground and you guys were running back and forth from security to try and get it but that you had to go back there a few days later for commercial filming work…How did that one go down from your perspective?
Yeah, it was for Bloomberg, the news agency. I’ve been doing a lot of work for the Wall Street Journal and some random stuff for CNN and I’ve been working for news outlets like VICE in the past.
The thing is I walk around that area all the time, but I could see the fire in Madars’ eyes. I knew he wanted to get this. His flight was leaving in a couple hours and he’s not going to be satisfied if he doesn’t get it. But then how far can you push the envelope? This is a spot too where the whole DC team got arrested once, a decade prior.
He already broke this little lamp under the Bank of China building under the handrail. He was able to just hide it in the bushes. But then the 50-50 is across the street, the rainbow, he tried a couple different tricks on the handrail and then didn’t get it. Then we went to the 50-50 on the rainbow.
Madars, 50-50, Hong Kong: Shot by Patrik
Then getting kicked out to the point where the guy’s just like I’m calling the cops. But he was bluffing at first and then we’re like, okay, he’s bluffing. So let’s go back one more time to the Bank of China Rail! Let’s try it and then he gets the Kickflip Front Board and then we go back to get the 50-50 and it’s just like really a cat and mouse game.
Madars has good karma because he got both and caught his flight and it was maybe the most productive two days that Hong Kong has ever seen.
Oh man.
Okay, maybe it’s Zered Bassett. Apparently, Zered Bassett came here in the early 2000s and it seems like he did everything in one week span, but it’s always good to see my fellow Eastern European Latvian friend, coming out here and half of the tricks were actually upside down. He was handstanding around Hong Kong.
I just love Madars. He’s just good energy, a unique human being. He’s always exciting to see riding on a board and who you can have really good conversations with. I think that’s a full package. We need to be entertained on the board and off the board.
Yeah, definitely, he’s so like he’s, it’s similar to, well even more so I think than Michael where it’s like he can literally skate, anything that you put in front of him. So he’s definitely someone who’s good to take help from.What was it that motivated you to shift your focus more towards the African continent?
After I finished ‘The Eurasia Project’ in 2017 at the age of thirty, I was just looking at the map and, half the time, I’m just in bed and I couldn’t fall asleep. I’m just on Google Maps, zooming into places, clicking on locations and just checking out where I want to go next.
That was one of those things, let’s fucking do the craziest Visualtraveling trip it’s gonna take us from the Nile, or the entrance of Cairo all the way throughout the east coast of Africa to the heart, finishing somewhere around the Congo.
At that point, I was also travelling a lot to North Korea with random, non-skaters to Turkmenistan with abstract individuals who really crave for the unknown. I’ve gotten a lot of info from these people. For example, like, you can actually go to Somaliland. It’s safer in Somalia, and you can go here. With all the information I’ve gotten, I’m gonna make this ultimate, African Visualtraveling trip.
I remember actually pitching it to Madars drunk in a van from Georgia to Armenia and Madars just kept being like, nope, won’t be coming on that one. Because it was seven weeks long.
Laurence had started working for Adidas already. Michael was busy and everyone’s like saying nah this sounds a bit too crazy. So that one actually got canned. We never did it.
So I picked up parts of it on my own, like with some like my partner in Postcard Production, the production house that I run here. So my friend Tommy Zhao, who runs the Vans program in China, and my really good friend Tobi Ulbricht , who’s a photographer/engineer.
So I started doing smaller trips and focusing more on photography. Going to Africa, we went to Djibouti and Sudan to see the Nubian pyramids there, not to be confused with the ones in Giza, Egypt. So I just slowly started like dipping into different parts of Africa.
But to answer your question, I won the ‘Videographer of the Year’ in 2013 in Europe at the Bright Tradeshow and the reward was from Red Bull. You can go anywhere on the planet and youjust build a trip around it and make a documentary. So I was like alright, what’s going to be the most difficult place to go flight-wise and which flights cost the most? I am not flying the Visualtraveling homies to Belgium or Switzerland.
We went to Madagascar and filmed this documentary and it seemed to do really well. It had 3 to 4 million views, which was I think even for Red Bull unprecedented at that time. So they were like, okay, you can keep doing this. So they just literally at one point, I think 2014 it was just like, yeah, where do you want to go? We can go anywhere!
Brian Dolle, Pushing a Cart, Madagascar
Never even went to the headquarters of Red Bull. He was just like, okay, where do you want to go? I want to Go to Kazakhstan. All right, build a crew. Who do you want to bring? And then, there were a couple of obligations, like, we had to bring one Red Bull rider and had to have one shot of the can visible throughout the documentary. So I’m like, all right, I’m cool with that. That’s not too demanding. It got a bit worse towards the end. That’s why it fizzled out in the end.
But in the beginning, it was really good. We had some of my favourite trips, like the one to Madagascar, Kazakhstan. I got to pick most of the people and just close friends, and it just felt like a Visualtraveling trip.
It became like clockwork, go to country A and then, film some stuff here, go to country B. Then that’s kind of also what was a downfall because it just became too routine. It became almost like just a formula that got too repetitive at one point.
Thats never a good thing but at least it’s consistent
But there was this nice focus on Africa, which I got to do with Sam McGuire, the photographer. He was leading a lot of these productions, and we just figured out different corners or stories that we wanted to do in Africa.
We went to Kenya to film two street kids who found skating and got off of the glue. So we were skating with them for a while, and we went to Ghana and hung out there with a crew that were girl skaters and we went to Namibia, Lesotho, South Africa, Senegal, Cape Verde and Mauritius.
It was great to be able to have the financial backing and still have a lot of control of the content and the videos that we’re creating because those productions were pretty expensive. I wouldn’t have been able to pull that all off under Visualtraveling. So it was a cool way to still travel and see parts of Africa that I wanted to focus on more.
I wanted to actually go deeper and deeper. But Covid happened, and then I don’t think I’ve been back since COVID So it’s been almost five years now, and I’m itching to go back at one point, but now with the baby and other duties and production house here, it’s hard to justify but I’m sure I’ll be back soon.
What different types of projects are you working on right now?
I’m about to release hopefully by next year a skate video out of Hong Kong. A lot of the Visualtraveling guys like Denny Pham and Michael Mackrodt came here to film for it. Madars has a line or two and is trying to get other travelling guests to come to get a trick before I wrap it up.
But yeah, the biggest project is this long-form documentary with Walker Ryan. That one is eating up a lot of the time, a lot of post-production because I’m filming it in a film vérité taste style which I learned how to film more or less during COVID when I was filming for a Showtime documentary called Sophia. It tells the story of a man who built a robot.
Walker Ryan, Kickflip
I love to multitask and it’s nice when it works out. Love it when you get to have a bit of a job on holiday too. I just have itchy feet to always document and capture things. I think it’s never gonna leave me. I always think that’s what drives me.
Even nowadays I’m just like every day I’m trying to film something. Like I have a folder for every day and I’m trying to fill it with some kind of format, whether it’s photos or video.Just try to find every day, even on the most normal day and try to find something unique and just try to capture it. So I’m enjoying that.
Sick before I let you go, I wanted to know what videos you would recommend to readers to watch and spots to check out. So, what’s your favourite skate video and why?
‘Photosynthesis’ especially the Habitat section. Mainly for Mr. Dibbs and American East Coast legends like Tim O’Connor blowing my mind early on spots in NYC and Philly.
Who’s your favourite skater of all-time?
Kenny Reed for the style and Powerslides, but to name someone more recent, I am really taken aback by Jaakko Ojanen’s ability on a skateboard!
Do you have favourite photographer?
Sebastião Salgado for his breathtaking work, all shot in black and white. Watch the documentary ‘Salt on Earth’ and you’ll know why!
Who is your favourite skate filmmaker?
French Fred for making ‘Bon Appetit’ and ‘Menikmati’.
Who’s got your favourite style on a skateboard?
Nestor Judkins knows how to push properly! If you ever meet him, test his board out, he might as well skate without bushings. It’s nuts, or technically nut-less haha
Rad, okay, where’s your favourite skate spot in Europe?
Since I like manuals, it used to be Paral-lel, but honestly the ground at the top of MACBA is hard to beat. It’s like the Kaaba at Mecca, converts all the skater.
Favourite skate spot in Asia?
Now this question is impossible to answer. There is like a favourite in most countries out here. Just cause it seemed like a mirage when I first came out to Shenzhen, China in 2007, I would say the wave spot here across the border from Hong Kong is really something else. Unfortunately it’s guarded by police there days. Let’s hope there will be a day we skate and film on those things again!
Definitely. To finish it off and I know this is a tough one as you’ve travelled so much but where your favourite skate spot in the world?
Honestly, any spot that gives a sticking backdrop. There is this hubba that I filmed Rob Wootton do a Backside Lipslide Shuvit that was in ‘Hotel Uzbekistan’ that came out in 2019, and Gosha Konyshev’s Backside Bluntslide that was in ‘Meet the Stans’ in 2012, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan that has a huge mosque right at the landing!
