Surftwisted Surf Magazine

yo, Big D, check twisted , 60-80 words about how twatty/ annoying/ pointless/ essential/ techy/ drippy/ lovely or unloved  surf photographers are would be good
need to post it tonight, big love, t xxx ps how do i contact Aaron Pierce, he invisible, t bone

Photographers:

‘To inspire. To evoke an emotional response.’

These are the words taped above the lightbox of Cape Town heavy water photographer Shaun Timoney. And they sum up perfectly the mantra of the surf photographer.

Timoney lived up to this credo, when he and Al Mackinnon simultaneously nailed jaw-dropping images of Californian Greg Long death-box rallying a 65-footer at Dungeons, South Africa, a few seasons ago.

I penned a lengthy historical perspective piece for ‘Surfer’ Magazine covering the session, titled ‘Breaking the Silence.’

But it was the images of Timoney and Mackinnon, which screamed like banshees off those glossy pages, which commanded attention and blew minds around the globe. Hawaii and Northen California had just lost their strangleholds on the big-wave map.

‘To inspire. To evoke an emotional response.’

Consider the influence of Mickey Smith – a Cornish lad who is the Pied Piper, the Rainmaker and the Widowmaker, all rolled into one creative, ginger-tinged, skinny-jeaned frame.

His visions, explorations, documentation and commitment to waveriding photography – in both prone and standup forms, have pushed him into a rarefied and heavily influential realm in sports photography.

Mick would of course laugh at that, ask me what I’m on, and not give it a further thought, but if Mickey’s work failed to elicit a deeply emotional response in you, you’d have to be either dead, comatose, or a heroin addict who had just shat in his pants.

Stu Norton paints in different brush strokes – his gallery-grade portraiture no longer leaves surfers uniformly depicted as cheesey-grinning, drip-rats in contest lycra, but as individuals, as characters, with stories and flaws and scars and monobrows.

Thanks to Sharpy, Timmy J Nunn, and Ben Selway, the British surf scene is visible and definable beyond the nearest pub, and you can’t avoid the fact that surfers are scoring ridiculous waves all around Britain, and so should you be!

The ‘there’s no surf in Britain’ stereotype has been soundly defeated by a few million litres of diesel, tea, and a few fresh photographic angles and locations.

Characters like the twisted pirate Tony Plant epitomise the ‘suffer for your art-istry’ of old, where each flawless water image he nails is traded off for several hair-pulling near misses. That’s why he’s bald. And will one day nail the shot of a lifetime. For us all to enjoy.

Some photographers are in the midst of the scene, slapping high-fives and bro-ing down, others are very much more low-key, composing their shots from a distance. All of them succeed in bringing us closer to our dreams, to our heroes and to our source of stoke.

Surf photographers are our documentarians, our historians and visual custodians, and often our source of life-changing inspiration.

In surfing, it has always been the iconic images, rather than eloquent speeches, that have bookmarked the changing of eras, heralding in new avenues of change, exploration, experimentation, chaos, pioneering and progression.

Finally, photogrpahers add a sense of perspective and permanence to the fleeting act of riding waves, creating something tangible out of our temporary interaction with waves, as liquid energy crests and dissipates to nothing.

In the UK we are blessed with a number of erratic, eccentric, spasmodic and thoroughly passionate surf photographers, some of whom enjoy international respect, others might just get a shot of you getting your best ever barrel at Croyde, and he may be the greatest photographer in the world to you.

I have just one request to make to all of them. Don’t make my ass look fat in this wetsuit, please.

Duncan