Pipe doesn’t need to be maxed out at the peak of a winter Northwest to be one of the deadliest waves on the planet. On February 9th, 2005, the world got a tragic reminder of this when Jon Mozo died photographing the action at Backdoor.
33-year old Mozo was a well-known and respected photographer on the North Shore when he passed, leaving behind a wife and four children. One of them, Amber, then nine, picked up a camera shortly after her father’s death. And through the past 13 years, Amber has become an accomplished photographer herself. She’s traveled all over the world photographing waves everywhere but as you’d imagine, her relationship with the wave that took her father away from her has been a complicated one.
“If it was worth dying for to capture that subject, it must be beautiful. It must mean everything to you,” Amber says now.
This winter, Amber set out to swim out at Pipe for the first time, just as her dad used to when she was a little girl. Under Zak Noyle’s wing, Amber trained and prepared herself for swimming and shooting in what’s still possibly the heaviest lineup in the world.
“I know that the last few seconds of his life, he must have been really happy. And knowing that he died a happy man makes me happy.”
