CHASING MAVERICKS: THE LADIES PART 2: DEANNA TEMPLETON AS MUSE

On page 154 of Ed Templeton’s photo book “Deformer” is a photograph of his then girlfriend, now wife, Deanna Templeton. It is Huntington Beach, 1988. Posed modestly, but naked except for a hairband, the teenage Deanna stares at the camera from what is probably her childhood bed. The sheets have a sprigged flower pattern, and a couple of hats hang from the bedpost. In the bottom left hand corner of the photo are the hand written words “THE BED OF LOST VIRGINITY”. In the upper left hand corner is the observation/notation/proclamation “STILL INNOCENT.” On the opposite page is a photomontage of Deanna dancing in her apartment with a cat in the background. . It is now 1994, and she wears a classic horizontal striped sweater and dark jeans. These images of Deanna became everything to me. They were my touchstone for the teenage girls, including Kim, in Mavericks. Clean faced youth, a tomboy aesthetic, caught up in a moment in time, these images resonated so much for me that Deanna became my de facto muse.

Consistently throughout Ed Templeton’s works there are more intimate, more sexually graphic, more revealing images of Deanna and their life together. But it was these moments of sweet vulnerability, and the words “still innocent” that had the Every Girl quality I was looking for. And on another note, the fact the Ed and Deanna Templeton were basically childhood sweethearts who met in their teens, and are still together today, echoed Jay and Kim’s relationship until Jay’s heartbreaking death.

Here are the 2 photographs, and a current image I found of Deanna in a recent online article about the couple. Deanna is also an established photographer in her own right. My favorite monograph of hers is “Your Logo Here”