Joni Sternbach’s analogue photographic technique from the 1850s brings a timeless feel to a new series of surfer portraits
Kelly Slater stands in the backyard of his home on the North Shore of Oahu, holding perfectly still for the camera. He’s barefoot, wearing a pair of board shorts and is holding a big-wave gun upright behind him. At first glance, it seems like just another photo shoot for the most popular surfer in the world, but the photographic equipment situated in front of him isn’t exactly the high-tech digital gear you normally see surf photographers carting around.
Getting settled behind a tripod with a large, wooden field camera affixed to the top of it is Brooklyn-based photographer Joni Sternbach, who’s spent the past decade creating antique-looking, large-format portraits of contemporary surfers. Sternbach is one-part chemist, one-part photographer, using a process called wet-plate collodion—an early photographic technique from the 1850s— that makes modern subjects (like an 11-time World Champ holding high-tech Tomo gun) look like a historical figure from the Civil War era.
Denne historien er fra Volume 59, Issue 3-utgaven av Surfer.
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Denne historien er fra Volume 59, Issue 3-utgaven av Surfer.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
60 Years Ahead
We had a whole plan for this year. Funny, right? Surfer's 60 year anniversary volume was going to be filled with stories nodding to SURFER’s past, with cover concepts paying homage to the magazine’s most iconic imagery. Our new Page One depicts something that’s never happened in surfing before, let alone on a prior SURFER cover. And our table of contents was completely scrapped and replaced as we reacted to the fizzing, sparking, roiling world around us. In other words, 2020 happened to SURFER, just like it happened to you.
A Few Things We Got Horribly Wrong
You don’t make 60 years of magazines without dropping some balls. Here are a few
THE LGBTQ+ WAVE
Surf culture has a long history of marginalizing the LGBTQ+ community, but a new generation of queer surfers is working to change that
For Generations to Come
Rockaway’s Lou Harris is spreading the stoke to Black youth and leading surfers in paddling out for racial justice
Christina Koch, 41
Texas surfer, NASA astronaut, record holder for the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman
END TIMES FOR PRO SURFING
By the time the pandemic is done reshaping the world, will the World Tour still have a place in it?
CHANGING OF THE GUARD
After decades of exclusive access to Hollister Ranch, the most coveted stretch of California coast is finally going public
What They Don't Tell You
How does becoming a mother affect your surfing life?
Four Things to Make You Feel A Little Less Shitty About Everything
Helpful reminders for the quarantine era
The Art of Being Seen
How a group of black women are finding creative ways to make diversity in surfing more visible
