Shaun Tomson
The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in 1955, hailing from Durban, South Africa, Shaun Tomson won the IPS world title in 1977. He did 14 seasons on the world tour, and won 12 events, including the 1975 Pipeline Masters, in which he made giant leaps for backside tube riding. He starred in many ’70s and ’80s surf films, among them Free Ride, where he’s seen pumping through the barrel at Backdoor and Off the Wall—an entirely new thing at the time. But Tomson’s surfing was only part of the equation. He was business minded, and in the late ’70s launched a clothing label, Instinct, and in 1985 a surf shop, Surfbeat, in...
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Ozzie Wright
The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in 1976, hailing from Narrabeen on the northern beaches of Sydney, Oscar “Ozzie” Wright burst onto the scene in the mid-1990s and swiftly ascended to global surf fame—never in contests, but nearly always doing something imaginative, like flying through the air, doing spell-casting things with the tube, or surfing remote Indo in a pair of handcrafted bat wings. Wright appeared in a number of Volcom-produced videos, among them BS!, Psychic Migrations, Lobotomy, and One Hundred and Fifty Six Tricks. A prolific maker of artwork in a variety of mediums including...
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Danny Kwock
The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in Hawaii in 1961, Danny Kwock rode his first waves at Waikiki when he was ten. Surfing took a brief hiatus when he moved with his family to the San Fernando Valley, but picked up soon thereafter when they moved to Newport Beach, right at Wedge, which is where Kwock made his mark, charging big waves and becoming one of the brightest, flashiest surfers of the Echo Beach scene, wearing pink boardshorts and riding polka dot twin-fins when most Californians followed a far more understated ethos. Kwock was featured on the cover of Surfer and Surfing magazines in the early 1980s, did a...
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Sachi Cunningham
The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
For more than two decades, Sachi Cunningham has been training her lens on women and the pioneers of big-wave surfing. After earning a BA in history from Brown University and a Masters of Journalism from UC Berkeley, Cunningham started the first video team at the LA Times, where she produced the award-winning series Chasing the Swell, which documents the first ever Big Wave World Tour. She was the first person, male or female, ever to have water shots published of wily Ocean Beach. Other “firsts” include serving as the first female board member of Save the Waves Coalition and first...
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Randy Rarick
The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in Seattle, Washington, in 1949, Randy Rarick moved with his family to Hawaii when he was five. He started surfing at age 10, under the tutelage of the Waikiki Beach Boys. He was a Hawaiian state junior champ, and made the semifinals of the 1970 World Championships in Australia. In 1976, at age 26, Randy and 1968 world champion Fred Hemmings founded International Professional Surfing, aka the IPS, which linked together what at the time were fragmented pro events around the world. They established a ratings system and a world tour, which ended with the crowning of a world champion....
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Ross Clarke-Jones
The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Hailing from the central coast of New South Wales, Australia, Ross Clarke-Jones joined the ASP world tour in 1986, at age 19. He was good in the small waves that the tour typically competed in at that time. But when the surf jacked up to 20-plus feet in the 1986 Billabong Pro at Waimea Bay, Clarke-Jones heaved himself over leadges and exited the water as one of the world’s great big waves surfers—and has held that position ever since. He’s been a major force in nearly every Eddie, winning that coveted event in 2001. He’s paddled Jaws, towed Mavericks, Nazare, and Shipstern Bluff, and...
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Bob Hurley
The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Surfwear tycoon Bob Hurley spent his early days around Huntington Beach, California, shaping for labels like Hot Stuff, Infinity, Wave Tools, and Lightning Bolt. After spearheading Billabong USA from 1983 to 1998, Hurley transitioned to the creation of his namesake brand, centered around an ethos of innovation that he observed in the youthful counterculture of Southern California at the time. While he stepped down as Hurley’s CEO in 2015, he remains deeply involved in surfing, still sculpting foam, as well as working with John John Florence on the latter’s own namesake company. In...
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Pauline Menczer
The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in 1970, raised in Bondi Beach, Australia, Pauline Menczer found her way to the surfboard at age 14. Actually, it was half a surfboard—a snapped hand-me-down from her brother. Four years later she won the 1988 World Amateur Champs, hopped on the ASP world tour, and finished the year ranked fifth overall. Her surfing was loose, springy, full of hurled tail. She won lots of events, and, in 1993, the world title. Menzcer has appeared in many surf videos, including 1998’s Blue Crush (the surf video, not the feature film), 2001’s Peaches: The Core of Women’s Surfing, and 2004’s...
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Chris Burkard
The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in 1986, Chris Burkard grew up on California’s Central Coast and knew from a young age that he had to get out. Photography became the avenue. Primarily self-taught, Burkard won the Follow the Light Foundation grant in 2006, and away he went, working as a senior staff photographer for Surfline, Water magazine, and Surfer magazine, as well as freelancing for The New Yorker, National Geographic, and ESPN.com. In 2009, he was contracted by Patagonia to be a projects photographer. Burkard’s photo books include The California Surf Project, Come Hell or High Water: The Plight of the...
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Jeff Hakman
The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in California in 1948, Jeff Hakman’s father introduced him to surfing at age eight. Four years later, the family moved to Oahu, and the year after that, at the age of 13, Hakman surfed Waimea Bay for the first time. In 1965, he was invited to the inaugural Duke Kahanamoku Invitational, held at Sunset Beach. Hakman was 17. He won. In the ensuing years, on his Dick Brewer-shaped boards, Hakman transitioned seamlessly from longboards to shortboards—and went on a winning streak. He won the Duke again in ’70 and ’71; won the first Pipe Masters in ’71; won the Hang Ten Pro and Gunston...
info_outlineBorn in 1986, Chris Burkard grew up on California’s Central Coast and knew from a young age that he had to get out. Photography became the avenue. Primarily self-taught, Burkard won the Follow the Light Foundation grant in 2006, and away he went, working as a senior staff photographer for Surfline, Water magazine, and Surfer magazine, as well as freelancing for The New Yorker, National Geographic, and ESPN.com. In 2009, he was contracted by Patagonia to be a projects photographer.
Burkard’s photo books include The California Surf Project, Come Hell or High Water: The Plight of the Torpedo People, Distant Shores, High Tide, and The Boy Who Spoke to the Earth. Along with still photographs, he makes films, including Russia: The Outpost Volume 1, Faroes: The Outpost Volume 2, The Cradle of Storms, and Under an Arctic Sky.
You might glean from those titles that Burkard has a penchant for the colder locales. On that note, he started photographing Iceland about two decades ago—and fell so in love with the place that, a couple years ago, he up and moved there with his wife and two sons. Along with photography, Burkard is also an avid adventurer, recently completing a 90-mile fat-tire bike ride across Vatnajökull, Europe’s largest glacier.
In this episode of Soundings, Burkard talks to host Jamie Brisick about traveling, Ansel Adams, the allure of cooler climates, finding purpose, moving to Iceland, the state of surf photography, and the challenges and rewards of environmentalism.
Produced by Jonathan Shifflett.
Music by PazKa (Aska Matsumiya & Paz Lenchantin).