In the 90s, a video by skateboard company Alien Workshop saw then-pro-skateboarder Lennie Kirk soaring boldly across his urban landscape. 33 seconds in, he flies off a dumpster, lands on his head and suffers from a near-fatal brain injury that sends his life on a 180 down a road of religious fanaticism, violence, robbery, kidnap and a 13-year prison sentence.

When photographer Dennis McGrath started capturing images of Kirk almost 20 years ago, he had no idea that they would later be used to tell the rise and gnarly fall of one of the most infamous names in professional skateboarding. In his book Heaven, McGrath combines photographs, letters and ephemera to illustrate Kirk’s unruly life both on and off the ramps.

Inspired by the work of Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, McGrath first started documenting the skateboarding scene in the mid 90s. It was in Clark’s book “Teenage Lust” where he saw first saw candid, black and white shots that captured what most kids his age were doing – having sex in the back seats of cars, taking drugs and skateboarding – photojournalism wasn’t something new to him, but it was the idea of photographing those close to him that kick-started his career behind the lens.

McGrath first met Kirk back in 1992 when he moved to California to pursue skateboarding seriously. He began documenting him in 1997 under the influence of Clark himself, who told him, “every time you see (Kirk) take a photo”. That same year Kirk’s career was peaking, but it was also the year his tragic fall accounted for knocking a few screws loose in an already eccentric mind.

Surviving the fall and escaping a subsequent near miss with death led Kirk to believe he had been “saved by God” and to dedicate himself to religion. While he had always been in-and-out of trouble with the law, this new found fanaticism (preaching to strangers, screaming at girls on the street for showing too much skin and even accounting his own deviancy and the laws that got him into trouble as “the work of Satan”) helped push his career downhill and since then homelessness, armed robbery and kidnap charges have contributed to his repeated incarceration and current 13-year sentence.

For McGrath, Heaven isn’t just about skateboarding; “it's more about the human condition and how it's not easy to be alive – and for some of us it's even harder.” Reading Kirk’s handwritten letters and looking at McGrath’s photographs of him, it’s hard to conclude whether he should be considered an innocent victim of misfortune or the crafter of his own sorry demise. Either way, Heaven’s nostalgic 90s scrapbook aesthetic and insider view of a truly chaotic true story make it a book worth seeing.

Heaven is available now. To see more of McGrath’s work, click here, or follow him on Instagram