March 18, 2025

Surfer Stories

 

Shaun Tomson, 1969, age 14, Makaha, Oahu, Hawaii

 
From the monstrous walls of water at Teahupoo, to the reef-scraping barrels of Pipeline, to the endless peeling break of Jeffreys Bay, an elite group of legendary surfers have made their mark on surf history — both in and out of the water — distinguished by the fearlessness, grace, and artistry displayed riding the most exalted waves. SURFER STORIES: 12 Untold Stories by 12 Writers about 12 of the World’s Greatest Surfers unveils their incredible experiences and reveals their profound connection with the ocean, the sport, and the culture of surfing.
 

Garrett McNamara, 2013, Nazare, Portugal. Photo by Tó Mané

 
Authored by STYLE of SPORT Editor and Founder, Claudia Lebenthal, the book is in fact a collection of stories by 12 different writers: fellow surfers, famed authors, celebrities, and surf journalists. Each bring their own unique perspective and voice, offering an intimate and personal look at the lives of these legendary surfers. The list includes: Read More

 

October 24, 2024

Kelly Slater: A Life of Waves

 

 

Kelly Slater: A Life of Waves is a photographic portrait of 11-time world champion Kelly Slater, captured by lensman, surfer, and friend Todd Glaser. This new coffee table book published by Rizzoli celebrates fifteen years of Slater’s exhilarating adventures from 2008 to 2023, and offers an intimate look at the life of this revered surfer, widely considered to be the greatest of all time. Read More

 

May 15, 2024

The Bikeriders

 

 

Danny Lyon is highly regarded as one of the most influential documentary photographers of the last five decades. Paralleling the style of 1960s “New Journalism” made famous by writers such as Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, Lyon is known for immersing himself in the communities of the subjects he photographs. One of those was the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Clubthe with whom he spent two years on the road. The resulting photographic series and book, The Bikeriders, is the inspiration for a new feature film of the same title opening this summer.

First published in 1968, The Bikeriders, documents the lives and journeys of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club in photographs and interviews from 1963 to 1967. Lyon was a motorcycle rider himself, and when he went to a meeting of the Outlaws in a bar, one of them asked him to join the club. Authentic and personal, Lyon’s depiction of the outliers of society portrays a gritty but humanistic view that contrasts from the commercialized image of America at the time. Read More

 

July 22, 2023

Shaping Surf History

 

 

 

FROM TOP: TOM CURREN, 1981; AL MERRICK AND STUDENTS, 1980; AL MERRICK WITH ONE OF HIS INNOVATIVE TWIN FIN SHAPES

 
Shaping Surf History: Tom Curren and Al Merrick, California 1980-1983, a new surf book from Rizzoli, documents a brief but influential period in surf history in Santa Barbara, California. It was an era that saw an extraordinary mix of innovation, individuals, and epic surf conditions on the back of a record-breaking El Nino — beautifully captured by author and photographer, Jimmy Metyko, in a visual encapsulation of one of the most fertile periods in the sport.

With dramatic action shots and personal vignettes, Metyko follows the rise of young legend-to-be and future three-time world champion Tom Curren, whose preternatural wave-riding abilities would help establish California at the forefront of contemporary surfing. He puts us on the waves with a remarkable view and insider’s perspective of the sport’s evolution embodied by this young surfer, whose singular style was enhanced by revolutionary board shaper Al Merrick of Channel Island Surfboards.

We recently chatted with Metyko about this era in surf history, his own evolution from surfer to photographer, and the compilation of work in his first book… Read More

 

July 13, 2022

Catch Every Wave: Chronicles of Surf

 

 

 

IMAGES FROM TOP: SURFER MAGAZINE: 1960-2020; INTO THE WILD; AFROSURF

 

From the beaches of Southern California to the shores of Africa, a summer swell of photographic surf tomes — SURFER MAGAZINE: 1960-2020, INTO THE WILD, and AFROSURF — celebrate and explore the rich history and culture of the sport through a diverse spectrum of lenses:

In its six decades in print, Surfer magazine was considered “the bible of surfing” before it ceased its print edition in 2020. SURFER MAGAZINE: 1960-2020, culls together the most iconic covers and pages from the magazine’s history to create a curated anthology on the evolution of the sport, and its style, design, and culture.

INTO THE WILD is a vibrant celebration of surf life captured by fashion photographer Matthew Brookes, who followed a group of young surfers from Venice Beach on their adventures up and down the California coast. The result is a documentary of van culture, and the story of youth who follow their passion — living for the simple joy of surf, travel, and freedom as they chase the waves.

AFROSURF showcases the beauty and diversity of African surf culture in a rich and colorful collection of profiles, essays, photographs, and illustrations that for the first time showcases the surfers of Africa’s vast coastline — from Morocco to Somalia, Senegal to Mozambique, South Africa and beyond. This vibrant book is the creation of Mami Wata, a Cape Town surf company dedicated to the power of African surf. Read More

 

December 19, 2021

Need for Speed

 


 

For decades, the Bonneville Salt Flats has welcomed various extraordinary automobile events, among which is the World of Speed. Every year in September, amateur and professional racing teams settle on the salt for a week to pursue their speed record dreams. In LANDSPEED 2, photographer Julien Roubinet explores this iconic gathering and otherworldly destination, embedded in the American car and DIY culture.

About 12 miles long and 5 miles wide, the Bonneville Salt Flats are a 30,000 acre expanse of hard, white salt crust on the western edge of the Great Salt Lake basin in Utah. The seemingly endless expanse creates a surreal environment, the perfect surface and location to reach speeds nearing 500mph. Read More

 

September 3, 2021

Ultramarathon Man

 

 

I’ve run the NYC Marathon 3 times. 26.2 miles is a heck of a long way to run, not to mention the hundreds of miles you log training for it. At no point on any of these quests did I think to myself, ‘26.2 miles just isn’t enough… I really wish it was longer’. But in the booming sport of ultramarathons, races are 50, 100, 135 miles, and even longer. Equally as grueling as the distances are the conditions in which they are run.

Dean Karnazes is often credited with that booming popularity, and putting the sport of ultrarunning onto the map. For him, a marathon is a training run, and he usually runs one before breakfast. Karnazes completed his first ultramarathon in 1993. His first 100-miler was the famed Western States Endurance Run, a race that has become the marquis event of the sport. With just 369 spots, there are nearly 10 times the number of applicants. It’s the ultramarathon everyone wants to run, and comparable to the NYC Marathon, there is a lottery to get in. Karnazes is an 11-time 100-Mile/1 Day Silver Buckleholder in the event, which is awarded for completing the race in less than 24 hours.

In addition to other unfathomable challenges is the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon. It is run across Death Valley in the height of summer where temperatures have climbed as high as 130 degrees. Karnazes won it in 2004, in addition to five other top-10 finishes from 2000 to 2008. At the opposite end of extreme, he has run a marathon in the South Pole, with temperatures as low as -40 degrees. He has run across the United States from Disneyland to New York City in 75 days; 50 marathons in 50 states on 50 consecutive days; and, just this summer, 1000 miles across Australia. Read More

 

February 22, 2021

Liquid Horizon

 

 

Born and raised in Kauai, surfer and photographer Daniel Fuller has spent his life in, on, and surrounded by water. He is regarded as one of surfing’s preeminent big wave riders. Fuller has become a lauded photographer as well. It is no surprise his images focus on the ocean, captured in an ethereal and mystical way. His intimate connection with the aquatic world brings a unique perspective to his photography, now published for the first time in Liquid Horizon: Meditations of the Surf and Sea. This retrospective showcases an opulent collection of abstract seascapes created from 2007-2020.

Fuller’s nocturnal images of waves and water are photographed evocatively by moonlight with slow exposures. While soulful, they exhibit a creative discipline, repeating and evolving a single idea over time. As art writer and gallerist Adam Lindemann describes in the preface, “The ocean and the shore are abstracted beyond recognition, to the point that what we see is just color; the composition is a transition from one to the other — dry land merges into the water and the image becomes a part of the liquid experience.”

Whether on a surfboard or with a camera, there are both similarities and differences in how Fuller captures a wave. We spoke to him about his process and vision, and the expression of his experience with the ocean into his art… Read More

 

July 26, 2019

The Fletcher Family: A Life in Surf

 
 
FOUR GENERATIONS OF THE FLETCHER FAMILY
Christian, Dibi, Greyson , Herbie, Nathan, and Nathan’s baby – Lazer Zappa Fletcher 
Astrodeck, San Clemente, California, 2015
Photo: Rafael Pulido, courtesy Fletcher Family Archive

 

Now on view at Gagosian in New York is the exhibition The Fletcher Family: A Lifetime in Surf, celebrating the soon-to-be published tome of the same title by Rizzoli. The legendary surf and skate dynasty that is the Fletcher family – Herbie and wife Dibi, their sons Christian and Nathan, and grandson Greyson – has been an institution in the action sport culture for decades, with an influence that extends beyond to the worlds of fashion, music, streetwear, and art.

Spanning fifty years of epic stories, photographs, personal ephemera and memorabilia, The Fletcher Family: A Lifetime in Surf is a visual memoir of this immensely colorful “first family” of surfing. Dibi narrates each chapter, accompanied by personal anecdotes about the family from notable contributors such as artist Julien Schnabel, photographer Bruce Weber, surfers Gerry Lopez and Kelly Slater, and the son of one of Vans founders, Steve Van Doren.

 

CLOCKWISE TOP: HERBIE, MAALAEA, HAWAII, 1976. Photo: Art Brewer, courtesy Fletcher Family Archive; HERBIE AND NATHAN, 1977. Photo: Art Brewer, courtesy Fletcher Family Archive; DIBI AND HERBIE, NORTH SHORE, HAWAII, 1970. Photo: courtesy Fletcher Family Archive; HERBIE, NORTH SHORE, HAWAII, 1969. Photo: Art Brewer, courtesy Fletcher Family Archive

 

In addition to selected imagery featured in the book, Gagosian has installed artworks by Herbie Fletcher called Wrecktangles. These large sculptures have been made from the surfboards ridden — and broken — by the greatest contemporary surfers at the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii. The board theme recurs in the Wall of Disaster series, which feature masses of skateboards mounted to the wall in anarchic accumulations. Similar to their surfboard counterparts, they form a cacophony of logos and images. Read More

 

April 30, 2019

Not Your Father’s Sports Mag

 

 

A new breed of sport magazine has hit the newsstands. These bespoke publications are not the product of a big media conglomerate, but published by and tailored to those passionate fans who want a different point of view than your typical sports magazine. With an artful approach, bold yet unconventional photography, and words spoken softly over the roar — each of these delivers those stories that often go untold with a journalistic and visual appeal that transcends the sport itself. Read More

 

March 31, 2018

Ice Cream Headaches

 

 

All photographs by Julien Roubinet from Ice Cream Headaches

For most who envision the life of a surfer, images of board shorts and bikinis, blue waters and sunny beaches, or Hawaii and California come to mind. Unfamiliar to many however, are the intrepid surfers who call the beaches of New York and New Jersey their home break, braving the frigid winter waters of the Atlantic in thick hooded wetsuits for a few fleeting moments inside a murky barrel. Theirs is the hardcore, diverse, and vibrant cold water surfing community that is celebrated in the newly released tome, Ice Cream Headaches.
 


 
Writer Ed Thompson and photographer Julien Roubinet met surfing at Rockaway Beach and spent four years logging more than 4,000 miles from Eastern Long Island to Cape May, NJ, interviewing and photographing the surfers, shapers, artists, and documentarians who make up the scene. From local legend and Montauk fisherman Charlie Weimar; to Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Finnegan; to professional surfers with global followings such as Quincy Davis, Mikey De Temple and Balaram Stack, the New York surf community is as rich and colorful as the metropolis at its center.  Read More

 

November 2, 2016

Slim Aarons: The Sporting Life

 
American society girl Minnie Cushing carries her surfboard under her arm. Sprouting Rock Beach Club, Newport, Rhode Island, September 1965. All photos by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

 

Now on chic coffee tables everywhere is Slim Aarons:Women, the newest monograph of Slim Aarons photographs. As chronicler of the lives of the rich and aristocratic in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s, Slim Aarons was unrivaled. His photographs are the embodiment of “the good life”, which of course includes the sporting life. Skiing in Austria, waterskiing in Antibes, surfing in Newport, canoeing in Lake Tahoe, and snorkeling in Bermuda are a few of the “leisure” activities, as Aarons refered to them, featured in the book.
 

Princess Lucy Ruspoli stands in front of a colourful wall of old skis in Lech am Arlberg, Austria, February 1979. (Photo by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Princess Lucy Ruspoli stands in front of a colourful wall of old skis in Lech am Arlberg, Austria, February 1979.

 

Aarons served as a photographer in World War II, and when it was over turned his camera in the opposite direction. According to the author of Slim Aarons:Women, Laura Hawk, who was Aaron’s assistant for over a decade, it was “people seeking pleasure” that inspired him, and he absolutely loved shooting sports. What became his niche of photographing the super wealthy was by accident, but it was there that he found the splendor in these activities and he was always looking for a new sporting angle. Hawk described one of their many trips to St. Moritz, when Aarons had heard about a new sport called “ski joering” at the famed Palace Hotel, where skiers were being across the ice pulled by a horse. He couldn’t wait to photograph it. Recalls Hawk, “Slim ran out into the middle of the track to get it head on. He was like a child about it. He loved the adrenaline rush!”
Read More

 
 

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