Marti brings tales of Shipsterns to your table. Photo: When the Ocean Awakens
We are happy to write that the reports of print’s death may have been exaggerated. The year 2024 has seen a raft of glossy, quality, heavyweight “coffee-table” books being published. Mind you, as a disclaimer, I’m no independent observer. I wrote the 256-page Breitling Book Of Surfing, which The Inertia graciously covered in April. It’s still available for sale, a great Christmas present, or failing that, an even better doorstop. More recently we also covered Kiwi photographer Rambo Estrada’s Unbound: Vol 1, his beautiful ode to road-tripping in New Zealand. But there are plenty more lux books hitting shelves and coffee tables soon. Here we look at the best of them.
When The Ocean Awakens by Marti Paradisis
“I feel we were so, fucking, lucky. Our group of friends came on the scene when Shipsterns had just taken off and slab surfing was coming of age,” Tasmanian surfer, and now author, Marti Paradisis told The Inertia. “We were part of our group of friends who were surfers, filmmakers and photographers. We all fed off the energy of each other because we all had the same goals.”
When The Ocean Awakens is his anthology of the key Tasmanian big-wave surfers and photographers and their two-decade quest for riding some of the most remote and treacherous waves on the planet. The 220 pages are also a testament to the unyielding spirit of adventure and camaraderie that was forged between these surfers.
Surf & Art: Contemporary Surf Artists Around the World by Veerle Helsen
Veerle Helsen is a Belgian mainstream art and architecture journalist who had success with her first book Surf & Stay. In that travel guide, she turned her back on “real life” and documented a wanderlust-fueled surf trip in a camper van through Europe. That trip was also the start of her love of surf and art. In her new book Surf & Art, she gathers the work of 30 contemporary surf artists from around the world. “This book is a tribute to surf artists worldwide,” said Helsen. “To see how they capture the essence of surfing and translate it to canvas, paper or digital spaces.” Artists include Jean Jullien, Quentin Monge, Jonas Claesson and Eric Abel and includes paintings, watercolors, graphics, and digital artworks.
Scott Hulet is best known for his 20-year stint as the editor of The Surfer’s Journal, from 1999 to 2019. His new linen-covered book Flow Violento covers this period, and plenty more and coalesces his travel reports, journal entries, profiles, interviews, transcripts, and recipes into a 248-page cross-genre, creative pot of surf journalism gold. His razor-sharp reports from the front line take in Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean while mixing surf, personality, fishing, cooking, humor and music from a writer always fully immersed in the waves and cultures he travels in.
This looks like a compelling read.
Kelly Slater: A Life of Waves by Kelly Slater and Todd Glaser
Good friend, and iconic surf photographer Todd Glaser is the latest to try and distill the essence and magic of Kelly Slater’s competitive career, surfing and life into a single tome. It’s fair to say he’s done a better job of capturing the mercurial, and sometimes elusive, GOAT than most, as Alex Haro recently wrote. The book covers a 15-year chunk of Slater’s world from 2008 to 2023. Few have had as much close access to Kelly as his friend Glaser, and while the action shots taken all over the planet are incredible and often iconic, it is the behind-the-scenes shots of Slater’s inner world that are the most revealing. Kelly adds his narration to the imagery, the intros and captions adding some depth, context and personality. The foreword by Eddie Vedder is a brilliant start too. In terms of a revealing, photographic portrait of Kelly, it’s easily the best out there.
Another book from the Rizzoli stable, this one is described as, “A love letter to the beaches and boardwalks of the Jersey Shore, this is the first visual history of the passionate surf culture that has thrived on the Atlantic Coast of New Jersey, and its influence on the worlds of surfing, skateboarding, and beyond.”
Dimauro, a filmmaker, and writer, and Kugelberg, a curator, archivist and gallery owner, bring an artist’s aesthetic to the project, as well as a historian’s eye for detail and narrative. Highlights include some of the incredible unseen surf photography from the last century, but it is the passion with which the authors plant their flag in the sand to ensure the Jersey Shore takes its place in the history of American surf culture that makes it compelling.
