As a young Polish girl ripping up America’s skate parks, Magdalena Wosinska was an anomaly among her predominantly male peers. A subculture dominated by misfits who found kinship in a love of skating and the scene which evolved alongside it, Wosinka’s anonymity gave her the ability to document with fly-on-the-wall access many others try to emulate. Picking up a camera aged 14, Wosinka has built a visual memoir dedicated to America’s skate culture, capturing skating legends Ed Templeton and Chad Muska with the same sincerity as friends trying out new tricks.

While Wosinska has gone on to forge a career in commercial and editorial photography, her archive from nearly three decades in the skate community is finally being brought to life in a monograph titled Fulfil the Dream. An ode to fulfilling a lifelong ambition of becoming a published skate photographer, Wosinska’s book has been built in opposition to the male-dominated scene reflecting on the highs and lows of a youth spent in California’s skate parks in a reinterpreted vision of the American Dream.

Ella Joyce: When you first started, what was your experience like as a young girl on the skate scene in the 90s?
Magdalena Wosinska: I was in Phoenix, AZ when I started skating in the mid-90s. I picked up a skateboard at the age of 12. It was a place of finding belonging in a place of misfits, immigrating to the USA from Communist Poland. Even though that was my new family, I still stood out being one of the only girls in that scene. It was tricky to navigate that world as a girl so I tried to be as much like a guy as I could. I wore baggy pants, had short hair, cussed a lot, and tried to drink out all the guys to prove my worth of being tough enough to be there. Maybe I didn’t need to do that but at the time it felt like I did. The world was not as open back then as it is now….

EJ: Some of the images in the book were shot when you were fourteen yet they feel as if they’re captured from a much older perspective, were there any photographers who inspired you in those early years?
MW: I was mostly inspired by my peers, hanging with my friends. I didn’t even know there were photographers to look up to back then, it was all just about documenting my surroundings. There was no internet, and I didn’t have a library card, so the influence just came from me in the very beginning.

EJ: 90s skate culture is now so heavily referenced in popular culture. At the time, did you feel you were capturing something special?
MW: Not at all, I didn’t even know it was cool when we were doing it. Back then we just lived in the moment.

“Back then I was a little teenage girl that no one would really take seriously, now it’s different.”

EJ: How did you arrive at the title Fulfill The Dream?
MW: There was a famous skate video in the 90’s called that. My dream was always to be a published skate photographer and now I had a chance to be that by making my own book. So when my designer Tom McQueen and I started working on it, he said I should call it that, because, in the end, I fulfilled my dream!

EJ: This book spans decades. How did it feel to look back through your archive? Did you notice certain ways your style evolved and shifted over the years?
MW: Well, it was cathartic. I cried at all the old good and bad memories from that time. And I noticed I’ve taken the same picture for the last 26 years. Nothing really changed about my images, just who is in front of the lens.

“I didn’t even know it was cool when we were doing it. Back then we just lived in the moment.”

EJ: Ed Templeton, Chad Muska, Jim Greco, and so many others feature in your photography. What was it like photographing them?
MW: Back then I was a little teenage girl that no one would really take seriously, now it’s different. Then people didn’t even notice me taking a picture, now we all have mutual respect for one another. But those guys specifically, like Chad and Ed, were always cool to me and down for me taking a photo.

EJ: As someone who spent their formative years immersed in California’s skate culture, what do you think it is that continues to draw people to the scene?
MW: Endless youth and sunshine.

Fulfill The Dream by Magdalena Wosinska is available to shop here.