Thomas Blake--born in rural Wisconsin in 1902--was the most important and essential figure in the history of modern surfing, as a designer, a surfer, a ''water stuntman'' in films, and as a person and persona. In 1922 Blake bought a small travel camera and began what would become an ongoing photographic essay on his life and the surfing world which defined it. Tom Blake: Surfing 1922-1932 beautifully reproduces this photographic series, documenting the seminal world of California and Hawaii surfing in the 1920s and 1930s. The book is available in a hardcover edition as well as a limited edition packaged in a slipcase.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Photos from Paradise...,
By joe tabler (San Diego, California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tom Blake: Surfing 1922-1932 (Hardcover)
These are marvelous pictures of a time that is barely imaginable --Tom Blake looks like god......his photos of he and Duke Kahanamoku and Tom's girlfriend are classics and priceless. Great slices-of-time surfing at Waikiki.....presented in a beautiful hardcover. Soon to be out of print....save in the limited edition - joe t. of surfbooks.com
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tom Blake: THE Man for Many Reasons,
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This review is from: Tom Blake: Surfing 1922-1932 (Hardcover)
Tom Blake Surfing: 1922-1932 presents a selection of Blake's photographs that define a period in surfing, a period of innovation and rediscovery of surfing's ancient Hawaiian roots. Blake's invention, the paddleboard, stands beside the heavier redwood boards of the period and provides a striking contrast in shape and weight. These lighter boards created a controversy when Blake paddled them to easy victories in races. They were clearly a quantum leap for surfboard design. Interestingly enough, the Blake innovation--hollowing surfboards--is still used today with balsa boards. In addition, if you have been to a beach in the summer and noticed the large wood boards atop rescue vehicles, you have seen the Tom Blake design at work to this day. The photographs, laid out in a eye-pleasing format on very fine paper, allow the reader to, as it were, review a unique period of history seen by few until this time and lived by few during that period, since history covering this time period usually focuses on the Roaring Twenties. Here the Roaring Waves provide another view of the Roaring Twenties, a view of life in California and Hawaii at once wholesome and relaxed. If readers look closely at the themes presented here in the photographs, they will discover the breadth of experience Tom Blake had at this time and later. To illustrate, Tom Blake was a stunt man for Hollywood, an inventor, a champion swimmer, a champion paddler, a historian and replicator of ancient Hawaiian surfboards, a phototgrapher...and more. What an impressive list for any man. Gary Lynch and Tom Adler have forever preserved an important bit of surfing history. Their hard work and attention to detail show in the informative Foreward and the explanatory notes at the end of the book. Only Blake's own notations appear on the photographs, allowing viewers to make observations on their own. This book is one of my treasured possessions.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tom Blake : Surfing 1922-1932,
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This review is from: Tom Blake: Surfing 1922-1932 (Hardcover)
Gary Lynch and Tom Adler have put together a book to expose Tom Blake to the general public. After a brief foreward that introduces us to Tom, we are supplied with images of a man that will immortalize him. Tom Blake was not an ordinary man or surfer. He was an innovative inventor that changed the pastime of surfing. A pictorial history of Blake is followed with thumbnails of the pictures and brief/succinct notes. I enjoyed the variety of the images and the emphasis on the "beach life." Blake obviously lived cleanly and simply. His life was directed by a force of nature that was compelling for him. The pictures are inspiring. It is a recollection of a time when surfing was simple. Yet, Blake, the man, was anything but the common thinker or surfer. He was a work of art and so is the book.
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