Surf's up: '70s wave culture celebrated in Oceanside photography exhibition

By: KIRBY FAIRFAX For the North County Times | Tuesday, July 3, 2007 1:44 PM PDT ∞

If you are having trouble getting into your summer groove, it might be time to don that old Hawaiian shirt and head on down to the Oceanside Museum of Art, where the focus is on all things beach and the cooling off is easy.

The exhibit on view, "The 70s: Surf Photography by Jeff Divine and Classic Boards From the Era," includes larger-than-life still and video images and a collection of colorful (and often psychedelic) surfboards. The event will also feature an artist's talk, a concert, and a film night during its two-month run.

The photographic art (and it is art, without a doubt) is by La Jolla native Divine, who began capturing his surfing buddies on film in the mid-'60s. Finding he had an aptitude for this mode of creative expression, he also realized there was a market for it, and in 1967 he had his first photo printed in Surfer magazine.

"I just started recording my friends. It was kind of an ego thing; basically, I think I just wanted to see myself out there on the waves. No one else was taking these kinds of pictures back then and I became enamored of it, so I saved up to buy my first camera. I was a surfer at first, but then gradually I began thinking of myself as a photographer. My first $25 legitimized this to my parents, who were both artists. They thought of surfers as derelicts, but they were really proud of me when my work appeared on the cover of San Diego magazine," Divine explained.

In 1971 Surfer magazne hired Divine as a staff photographer, and he spent the next decade based in Hawaii but also traveling the globe in search of the next perfect wave and wipeout. He has continued to perfect his craft, working most recently for Surfers' Journal.

The images in this show reflect that first body of work, of which Divine says, "When I started I just did it because I loved it; there was no money in it whatsoever. But it's either in you or it isn't, you either can do it or you can't, and I guess it was in my DNA, because people started getting excited about it. I started showing at a gallery in L.A., and then there was all this highbrow talk. I just try to capture what I see so others can see it too. I just form up the foreground and background, point and shoot."

And what the viewers get to see as a result of that pointing and shooting is Divine's ability to paint images with his lens: some poignant, some exuberant, some poetic and others prosaic, as he depicts a lifestyle and culture that involves surfers at work and at play. With an instinctively passionate eye, he expertly combines composition, balance, harmony, focus and ---- most important ---- a socko-boffo use of color that says it all.

His often powerful, often peaceful waves wash over the observer with the luminous iridescence of cut glass and diamonds, in a saturated palette of cobalt blue seas set against piercing yellow foam and no-nonsense ocean-deep greens.

The artist will speak about his work at 7 p.m. July 19 at a special reception ($5 admission), and on Aug. 9, the museum is hosting a concert with the Surf Kings, to include beer and pizza, at 7 p.m. ($15 admission). Aug.18 is surf film night, featuring a 6:30 p.m. screening of the 1975 Hal Jepsen film "Super Session" in the Civic Center Community Room ($5 admission).

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