Surfing
Heritage and Culture Center
Celebrates
Surfing
Second
in a Two-Part Story
Sunny
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The Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente has an incredible collection of
photographs depicting the early days
of surfing as it evolved into a major sport and unknown surfers became legends.
There are more than 200,000 images in the center’s files,
ranging from snapshots in family photo albums to iconic moments in surfing
history captured by professional photographers.
And the center’s goal is to digitize and preserve all of
them.
Surf photographer Steve
Wilkings, the center’s photo archivist, told SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug
and Patti Kishel, “It will take years to do it. We have over 130 different
collections of photographer’s works. Some are just a few pictures. Others are
in the thousands.”
Wilkings, who was in the same surf club in Hawaii as
acclaimed board shaper Ben Aipa,
clearly relishes his task of rediscovering the “time in a bottle” images of the
surf culture evolution and making them available for posterity.
Like finding an unexpected treasure on the Antiques Road Show, Wilkings never knows
what he’s going to see when he looks through a box of photos or opens an old
photo album.
Often the person bringing in the photos isn’t aware of
their significance, either. Wilkings remembers “One photo album that was
brought in had a photo right on the first page of Duke Kahanamoku…sitting in
the sand at San Onofre with local surfing legends.”
Among the works in the center’s collection are photographs
taken by Warren Bolster, one of the
first to document California’s skate and surf culture, innovatively using
fish-eye lenses, strobes, deck-mounted cameras, and other means to get right
into the middle of the action.
Works by underwater photography pioneer Clarence Maki are in the center’s
archives, too. Maki, who created a water-proof plastic housing for his
Rolleiflex camera so he could get better shots, was the last person to
photograph Duke Kahanamoku riding a wave – capturing the moment August 24,
1954, on Duke’s 64th birthday.
One of the photo collections that interests Wilkings the
most is an album of black-and-white photos taken in the 1960s by local
architect Don Davis, a member of the
San Onofre Surf Club. “Davis got a Polaroid camera and took photos of all the
families in the club,” said Willkings. The photos were pasted in a book with
the names and information about the family members noted on each page –
providing a slice of California surf history.
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Along with the photo collections...
the center also has
vintage video footage of surfers and
surfing spots from as far back as the early 1900s.
One of the videos in the
collection shows the Surfing Championship in Huntington Beach during the 1960s
before it became The U.S. Open of Surfing.
There are some interesting surprises in the center’s
archives… like this video of the popular 1960s surf band The Ventures performing their mega-hit Wipe Out in Japan.
Wilkings pointed out to SurfWriter Girls that the center has
an extensive magazine collection, too, including “every U.S. surfing magazine
ever published.”
With new photos being archived on a continual basis and
special exhibits and events throughout the year, there’s always something new
to see at the center.
Surfing Heritage and Culture Center founder Dick Metz is one of the key figures who
helped to grow the sport of surfing…
and suggested the Cape St. Francis South
African surfing spot to filmmaker Bruce Brown for his groundbreaking, 1966 surf
movie The Endless Summer… conceived of
the center as a place to celebrate surfing and the people and events that have
made it what it is.
The center’s goals of preserving the culture of surfing
and inspiring new generations of surfers are summed up in its tagline: “Shaping
surfing’s past, present and future.”
In keeping with this, when SurfWriter Girls Sunny and
Patti visited the center, Linda Michael,
who oversees its events and membership programs, was giving a tour to a group
of high school kids. Now, that’s a cool field trip!
The center is open Monday through Saturday, from 11 a.m.
to 5 p.m. For more information, check its website: Surfing Heritage and Culture Center or call 949-388-0313.
Located at 110 Calle Iglesia, just east of the I-5
freeway, in the heart of San Clemente, the center’s spacious and airy quarters
are right in the middle of where much of California’s surf history began.
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