Dallas Center for Architecture presents: Birth of Surf: The 1960s and 1970s Documentary Surf Photography of LeRoy Grannis

by PegNews wire

Image provided by the Mulcahy Modern

The Dallas Center for Architecture is pleased to present Birth of Surf: The 1960s and 1970s Documentary Surf Photography of LeRoy Grannis, curated by Cynthia Mulcahy from the Mulcahy Modern in Dallas. The exhibit runs June 22 - August 21, with a reception on July 16th.

In the early 1960s in Hermosa Beach, Calif., surfer and amateur photographer LeRoy Grannis began documenting the burgeoning surfing scene along the Southern California coast. In retrospect, what he captured was surfing’s golden years and the evolution from a DIY culture of surfers making their own boards, surf zines and films to mainstream media’s adoption of a new American heroic figure: the surf god. With his pluck and cool insouciance, the surfer defined the new modern archetype, and Hollywood and the advertising industry fell hard, producing big-budget films and using iconic surf imagery to help sell cars, vacations, and fashions to a nation of new mass consumers.

LeRoy Grannis recorded with his camera lens the entire surfing lifestyle in California and Hawaii: the tanned surfers, the beach crowds, the landscape, the surf fashions, the skaters, the surf contests, the architecture, the cars and surf graphics. In effect, he captured an era and a lifestyle that defined a shifting American identity in the modern period of the 20th century in an important and gorgeous body of photographs to be shown at the Dallas Center for Architecture. Just in time for summer 2009, this exhibition of LeRoy Grannis’ photographs, organized by independent curator Cynthia Mulcahy and free to the public, offers us a nostalgic look back at the 1960s and 1970s.

Source: The Mulcahy Modern