A Golden Age

Surfing’s formative period from 1965 to 1978, as shown through the most complete book of the iconic images of photographer John Witzig. Chronicling the great creative years in the evolution of surfing, the late 1960s and early ’70s, this engaging volume documents the revolutionary changes of the era—in board length, in surf style and technique—through the images of Australian photographer John Witzig. Witzig was not only photographing the scene, he was part of it, a group that included surfers Bob McTavish and George Greenough, and his images reflect both that access and that intimacy. In 1967, he created a firestorm of controversy with a Surfer cover story declaring that a core of young Australian surfers had redefined the sport, as evidenced by his friend Nat Young’s blazing win in the 1966 World Surfing championships. Witzig went on to capture the defining moments—the surfers, the draft-dodging back-to-landers, the radical developments of board design, and, of course, the waves, from Australia to Honolua Bay—of surfing’s most thrilling period. Soulful, poetic, iconoclastic, filled with rare images, this book is a unique look at surfing’s cultural revolution.