A Few Days One Summer

For a few years now, I've wanted to do some large format portraits of surfers using the old Polaroid 55 film. I could see the images in my mind. They would be big, handsome pictures of heroic types holding their surfboards on beaches and jetties, bold testimony to the simple, natural good life.

But two things happened before I acted. The first was Polaroid's announcement that they were no longer going to produce that film (and later that they would not produce instant film at all). The second was Joni Sternbach. I came across her work when I began to get interested in the old wet plate collodion process of photography used during the Civil War. I was devastated when I first viewed her beautiful tintype images of surfers. It seemed to me that she had done it, and now she owned it. There was no sense in trying to top what she had already done so beautifully.

And so I contacted her and arranged to take a workshop at her studio in New York. I sent her some jpegs of the work I was doing at that time and she agreed to let me come. But way led to way, and much to my regret, I was not able to go.

This summer, I went to a section of a Florida beach which I don't usually visit, where an inlet dissects the land and the waves are well-shaped. My girlfriend was wanting to learn photography and so we had taken a couple of cheap, plastic toy cameras with us for fun. It was a cloudy day, but there were still beach goers and surfers all about. As we walked along, I saw two surfers coming out of the water, a father and a son as it turned out, who looked magnificent. Thinking about the abandoned project, I said to her, "Why don't you ask them if you can take their picture?" And she did. And while she arranged them together and stepped back to make the photograph, a jealous desire drove me to walk over and ask, "May I take one, too?"

And that is how it began. When the negatives and proof sheets of the day's efforts came back, I was knocked out by the images. The little toy Holga seemed a perfect tool for making this series. While the images are contemporary, they seem timeless, too, like something taken during the '40s and '50s and 60's.

I want to thank everyone who allowed me to impose upon them in my subsequent trips to that little stretch of beach. I do not know all of their names, but I have seen many of them there again and again. It is a wonderful place full of generous people. I will continue with this project as long as I am able.

There will be many more images uploaded here over time. If I took your photo and you do not see it here, you will eventually. Until then, I'll see you at the beach.