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In Turner's era, one common subject for expressing the ocean's fatal power was a
shipwreck, as in this Turner picture, The Shipwreck.
The Poetry Of Motion
One great challenge for surf photographers is to convey dynamic motion in a single frame.
Patrick Trefz meets it inspired by a variety of techniques from the history of photography.
Some techniques are realistic, such as the use of the shutter's mechanical potential to
reveal moments hidden to the unaided eye. In Trefz's image of Anthony Tashnick [88],
the athlete is caught in a seemingly weightless pose while finishing a close-out wave on a
floater. This anatomy of movement dates to the beginnings of action photography, with
Eadweard Muybridge's studies of locomotion, as in this series, clarifying when a galloping
horse's legs leave the ground.
In such an image, as in photos of big-wave surfing, contrasts in scale measure fragile
humans and their technologies against the might of the raging sea. Similar to Ke'Iki
Deathpound, Turner expresses out-of-control elements by blurring the boundaries among
forms, colors, and textures, confusing the distinctions among water, air, and solids. At
the same time, Trefz's big wave photos do away with the melodrama of the conventional
sublime. In contrast to Turner's focus on death and destruction, Flea [45], Mel [16],
Clark [55], Replogle [119 ], and others snatch fleeting moments of human triumph.
Joseph Mallord William Turner,
The Shipwreck (1805). ©Tate, London 2011.
Other images in Surfers' Blood animate a still image with techniques from art photography.
Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate
626 (1878). Courtesy of George Eastman House,
International Museum of Photography and Film.
Masters Of The Craft
Both Turner's sailors and the surfers depicted by Trefz survive through a combination of
skill, daring, experience, and cunning that the great novelist of the sea, Joseph Conrad,
called craft. Admiration for craft threads through the photos in Surfers' Blood, and the
subject has a distinguished pictorial lineage. In photos of shapers' studios, whether Jeff
Clark inviting us into his workshop [54], or Jed Noll studying his father, Greg Noll, carving
a board [22], Trefz recalls the importance of the studio scene in highlighting the nobility
of finely skilled work and art. The scene can stage a famous painter before his easel
surrounded by apprentices and admirers, as in the 19 th century painter Gustave Courbet's
The Artist's Studio. It can also offer a more intimate glimpse of the young artist, such as
this picture by the 17 th century painter, Fabritius Barent. In Trefz's photo, Akila Aipa [37],
too, a young man is absorbed to the point of ignoring the viewer. The shaper's face is
hidden and Trefz shows us the dignity of his work through his careful hands, his tools, and
his material. The man shaping, Alkila Aipa, is carrying on a craft inherited from his father,
the legendary Hawaiian shaper and surfer Ben Aipa.
The shot of Josh Mulcoy in a barrel [73] recalls the effect of solarization pioneered by the
surrealist photographer Man Ray. As the image below by Man Ray illustrates, solarization
can create the impression that a body is floating, contrary to the laws of gravity, suffused
with radiant energy. Driving in the eye of a barrel, Josh Mulcoy defies gravity as well. At
the same time, note the difference in tone: Josh Mulcoy's assertive power is crackling and
electric, in contrast to the dreamy, passive floating muses of Man Ray.
Destabilizing the viewer's points of reference is another way art photography animates a
frozen frame. Trefz speaks admiringly of California Surf Sequence, by the iconic American
landscape photographer Ansel Adams. In this third image in Adams's sequence, a close-up
of foam, Adams flips to the top of our field of view an event that occurs on the ground.
Adams further sets our brains in motion by making it hard to distinguish sea, stone, and
foam, all unified as shades of gray. Trefz's image of Cheyne Magnusson's backflip [7] in a
landscape reminiscent of Adams's, similarly confuses our eye to enhance our appreciation
of Magnusson's feat. While commercial photography would focus on Magnusson's leap,
Trefz puts it so far in the background that we locate it with some disbelief. The image
further disorients us by using black and white to confuse the elemental differences
between rock and water. The frothing water intimates the danger of a missed landing by
appearing as solid as the ominous rocks.
Fabritius Barent, Young Painter in His Studio
(1655–1660). Louvre, Paris, Réunion des Musées
Nationaux | Art Resource, ny.
May Ray, Solarization (1929). ©2011 Man Ray
Trust | Artists Rights Society (ars), ny /adagp,
Paris. Image courtesy of George Eastman House,
International Museum of Photography and Film.
The importance of apprenticeship in the crafts of the sea runs throughout Trefz's photos
of parents and children, from Surfers' Blood's pairing of Bill and Josh Mulcoy [72, 73]
to Ramon Navarro paired with his fisherman father weaving kelp [56, 57]. Along with
celebrating bloodlines, Trefz's photos pay homage to the sport's venerable masters. Trefz
often composes his portraits of the great men of surfing, such as Wally Froiseth [116],
Buffalo Keaulana [8], and Peter Cole [59], in keeping with a humanist tradition of
portrait painting, which passed into the new medium of photography in the 19 th century.
As shown by Julia Margaret Cameron's photograph of the poet, Albert Tennyson, such
portraits turned the great man into a timeless bust, often shot in 3/4 or profile against
a studio background.
When Patrick Trefz describes his artistic apprenticeship, he recalls a childhood shuttling
between divorced parents — his Mom in Düsseldorf, his Dad in Paris — along with early
exposure to world travel and a slew of art galleries and museums. He mentions falling
in love with the colorful, playful Centre Pompidou at the age of eight. Paris was and is a
great movie city, and Trefz singles out Wim Wenders's Paris, Texas as making a particular
impression. Perhaps the eerie glow suffusing Wenders's cinematography of the American
West is an inspiration for the great open skies, which are the backdrop for so many images
in Surfers' Blood. These skies intimate an otherworldly transcendence. They remind us of
the mystery and mortality coursing through surfers' blood, along with the commitment
and the passion.
Julia Margaret Cameron, Illustration to Alfred,
Lord Tennyson's “Idylls of the King” and Other Poems,
London: 1875. (1865). Courtesy of George Eastman
House, International Museum of Photography and Film.
Trefz diverges from the tradition of legendary portraiture, however, when he also
photographs masters of the craft in action. Thus, Bill Mulcoy, tucked into a majestic wall
of water, in a harmony of aqua, tan, and white [114].
Ansel Adams, Surf Sequence iii, California Coast
(ca. 1940). ©2011 The Ansel Adams Publishing
Rights Trust. Image courtesy of Center for Creative
Photography.
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