J Skis Collabs With Accomplished Ski Photographer Oskar Enander On Limited-Edition Skis

The brand perhaps best known for its eclectic top sheets is back with a new ski graphic, and it’s one that celebrates a facet of ski culture near and dear to POWDER Magazine.

J Skis has released a new limited-edition (all of their skis are limited-edition in some sense) version of the Escalator featuring the photography of Oskar Enander.

In the words of J Skis, “If you’re a skier, you’ve seen Oskar Enander’s photography your whole life. You just didn’t know his name.” Enander’s photos are hallmarked by high contrast, deep blues, and often make the viewer feel the lightness of the snow, the warmth of the winter sun, and the edge of a ski engage.

Enander hails from Sweden but now calls Engelberg, Switzerland, home, where he shoots with skiers like Marcus Caston, Johan Jonsson, Joel Pollinger, and Piers Solomon. With skiers like these in front of the lens, it’s not surprising that Enander’s images highlight turns the way they do.

In 1999, Enander dropped out of engineering school and moved to Chamonix in pursuit of the ski bum lifestyle. His photography career began just a couple of winters later, when he bought his first professional camera.

In March of 2003, Enander shot a photo of Swedish skier Kalle Eriksson. He sent the image to POWDER in his first-ever submission to the magazine, which went on to win Photo of the Year at the 2004 POWDER Awards.

Enander won the award a second time in 2006, with a photo of Julian Carr hitting a cliff, which they estimated to be 210ft at the time (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, stay tuned for the 2027 print edition of POWDER…). In 2014, Enander won the award a third time, the most of any single photographer, with an image of Eric “Hoji” Hjorleifson shot at British Columbia’s Sentry Lodge while filming for Sweetgrass Productions’ Valhalla (2012).

It’s not just Enander’s natural eye that makes his work unique; the photographer is also partially colorblind. In an interview with Athleta, Enander said that he tends to mix up colors, seeing purple as dark blue, for example, but in the mountains, where his environment is blue and white, it doesn’t affect him as much, and he’s able to work off light more than anything.

Dubbed ‘The Perspective,’ the limited edition ski by J Skis features Enander’s images stacked along the length of the top sheet. The base of the ski features a single shot of a powder field, characterized by Enander’s signature use of shadows and blue tones.

The Escalator is a 102mm underfoot ski, meant to take you from resort days to backcountry laps seamlessly with a lightweight Aspen core construction and carbon fiber stringers to reinforce and dampen the ski.

The ski is available in 162cm, 169cm, 176cm, 182cm, and 188cm lengths, with only 200 pairs available in total at jskis.com.

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