Born in San Diego and raised in La Jolla, California, Jeff Divine is now considered one of the most iconic and talented surf photographers in the history of surfing. In a little more than four decades after he started taking photographs of his fellow surfers around La Jolla in the 60’s, he provided archives of imagery with vivid and colourful testimonies of the evolution of the culture and fashion in surf scene of that time.

The 70’s marked a turning point in surf history, those years seeing the premises of the professional surf industry as we know it today, sketching today’s unfamous major competition events. The surf scene was still small and the first competitions rewarded the athletes with more recognition and respect than actual valuable prizes. These are the days when you could bump into Gerry Lopez with his memorable Lightning Bolt surfboard on the sand in front of Pipeline, Oahu, or meet the artist Glen Chase, colourfully painting a van around the La Jolla Shores. Long hair, psychedelic patterns on boards and tees were still raging, and Jeff Divine was no exception to the rule:

“Yes, I had long hair. And Pendleton’s, Mexican wedding shirts, bell bottoms, Wallabies, Zig Zags and tuna, wheat bread, and sprouts in the fridge. Santana, The Dead, Jesse Colin Young, Steppenwolf, Moby Grape, The Stones, Beatles and Clifton Chenier on the stereo. Hippie seamstresses made us custom shirts with embroidered necks and coconut buttons. I had a beaded curtain through which you entered my den. No, I didn’t have any black light posters, but I did have the Juan O. Gorman poster “Flores Imaginarias” and Ortner at 3M’s on the wall. Reading material? The Life Photography Series, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, M.C. Escher art books, Zap comics, or the Carlos Castaneda series. But our prize possessions were our garage-made surfboards all lined up in the side yard. They mattered the most.”

At that time he got his first professional gig with Surfer Magazine, marking the start of a long list of trips to capture surf moments and faces, including around 40 annual trips to the North Shore of Oahu. About his passion, Jeff Divine confided: “I surfed first and then shot photos. As things got more serious, I shot first and surfed later. Getting the shot became almost as fulfilling as getting the wave”.

All photographs © Jeff Divine.

More photos in the book “Surfing Photographs from the Seventies Taken by Jeff Divine”