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October 31, 2026

Through the Lens: The Photographers Who Framed Board Culture

Surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding became cultures as much through photographs as through riding. Meet the photographers who invented how board sports look, from LeRoy Grannis on the beach in the 1960s to Glen E. Friedman in the drained pools of Dogtown.

Intro

Most people have never stood on a 20-foot wave or flown out of an empty swimming pool. They know what it looks like because someone photographed it. Board sports grew into global cultures largely through magazines, and magazines lived on their pictures.

This article introduces some of the photographers who decided how surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding look. Their photographs are protected by copyright, so we describe their work and link to sources where you can see it.

Surfing: inventing surf photography

Doc Ball

One of the earliest surf photographers was John "Doc" Ball, a California dentist. His book California Surfriders (1946) is one of the first collections of surf photography, and it included early pictures by a young LeRoy Grannis.

LeRoy Grannis (1917–2011)

LeRoy "Granny" Grannis is often called the godfather of surf photography, a title the New York Times used. He took up photography seriously around 1959, after a doctor advised him to find a hobby and Doc Ball suggested the camera.

He solved practical problems no one had solved before. According to Wikipedia, he built a rubber-lined box that let him change film while out in the line-up, something other photographers had to paddle to shore to do. His pictures appeared in Surfer and other magazines, and he co-founded International Surfing magazine. In 1966 he was named the top photographer in the International Surfing Hall of Fame. His work from the 1960s and 1970s was collected by Taschen in 2006 as LeRoy Grannis: Birth of a Culture.

John Severson

John Severson founded The Surfer, later Surfer magazine, in 1960, and he photographed, painted, designed posters and made films. Magazines like his turned surf photography into a profession, because now there was somewhere to publish it every month. (Read more in our article on surfboard art.)

Skateboarding: from Dogtown to the ollie

Warren Bolster (1947–2006)

In 1976, Surfer's publisher Steve Pezman asked Warren Bolster to revive SkateBoarder magazine, which had lapsed after a short run in the mid-1960s. Bolster and his colleagues re-created it, and it became known as the "bible" of skate magazines.

According to Wikipedia, Bolster was among the first to use fisheye lenses, motor-drive sequences and strobes to document skateboarding. He later moved to Hawaii and photographed surfing from helicopters and with cameras mounted on boards.

Craig Stecyk

Craig Stecyk was a co-founder of the Zephyr surf shop in Santa Monica and an artist, writer and photographer. His photographs and stories about the Z-Boys, the "Dogtown articles" in SkateBoarder, turned a local crew into an international legend. (See our article on LA punk and skateboarding.)

Glen E. Friedman (born 1962)

Glen E. Friedman was still in junior high in late 1976 when he photographed a pool session with friends and showed the pictures to SkateBoarder. The magazine ran them as a full-page ad and soon made him its youngest staff member.

His importance goes far beyond skateboarding. According to Wikipedia, he was one of the first to document Black Flag, and shot the covers of the Adolescents' 1981 debut album and Minor Threat's Salad Days EP. In the mid-1980s he worked with Def Jam Records and photographed Run-DMC, Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, including the cover of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

Friedman's books show how skateboarding, punk and hip hop grew from the same attitude: Fuck You Heroes (1994), Dogtown: The Legend of the Z-Boys (2000, with C.R. Stecyk III) and My Rules (2014). He was also co-producer of the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001).

J. Grant Brittain (born 1955)

J. Grant Brittain worked at the Del Mar Skate Ranch in California from the park's second day of operation and began photographing the skaters there in 1979. He shot Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero and Mike McGill as they were developing the tricks of modern vert skating.

In 1983 he helped found TransWorld SKATEboarding as an editor and senior photographer. According to Wikipedia, he was one of the first skate photographers to make a living from the work.

Snowboarding: skate style on snow

Snowboard photography borrowed directly from skateboarding.

Trevor Graves

Trevor Graves grew up in Syracuse, New York. In October 1985 he and his friend Scott Clum shot a black-and-white picture of Clum riding a snow ramp built in a farm field, and they sent it to Tom Sims at Sims Snowboards in California. Graves has said that the photo set up his career, and that he wanted to make more "skateboard-style pictures" of snowboarding.

That idea, shooting snowboarding like skateboarding, with the rider's style at the centre, shaped how snowboarding was photographed through its boom years. Graves later founded the design agency Nemo Design in Portland, Oregon.

What these photographers had in common

  1. They were part of the scene. Grannis surfed, Friedman skated with the Dogtown crew, Brittain worked at the skatepark. They photographed their friends, not strangers.
  2. They solved technical problems. A film-changing box in the line-up, fisheye lenses, motor drives and strobes: each new tool made a new kind of picture possible.
  3. They needed magazines. Surfer, SkateBoarder and TransWorld gave them somewhere to publish, and their photos sold the magazines.
  4. They crossed over. Severson moved between painting, film and photography. Friedman moved between skateboarding, punk and hip hop. Board culture was never just about sport.

Where to see their work

The best places are the photographers' own books and websites, and the archives linked below. Many of their prints are also in galleries and museum collections.

Sources