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Surfboards are not mere tools for wave-riding. To those passionate and dedicated about surfing, a board can also be a trusted talisman in perilous waters, a collectible work of sculptural art, or even a milestone in surfing history. Surfers, even top professionals, often describe a favorite board as "magic" and because surfboards have been mostly hand made by master craftsmen, a truly magic board is an object that can be hard to replicate or replace. This comprehensive book - Surfboards - is about those magical objects that allow surfers to harness the natural power of an ocean wave to create a spectacular dance on water or to speed unscathed across a massive, life-threatening wall ten times overhead. Through the surfboards featured in these pages, the history and evolution of the sport itself is traced from ancient Hawaii, where solid wood surfboards were revered and given spirit names, to today's technological age in which tried and tested designs are accurately reproduced through computers and composite aerospace materials.

Biografie

Guy Motil, internationally acclaimed photographer and publisher of Longboard Magazine, started surfing in 1962 at the age of 12 and surfboards have been part of his life ever since. He has surfed them, traveled the world with them, on occasion slept beside them, and more times than he should admit, he¿s had to repair them. He has found each design to have a personality and temperament all its own. Even surfboards that appear remarkably similar can be remarkably dissimilar when ridden, and for at least the last 100 years or so (and probably much longer), surfers have been trying to make sense of it all. To date he has shot private collections (few public collections have existed) in all parts of the world from South Africa to Australia, from New York to Hawaii, and now has a photo collection of over 4,000 historically significant surfboards.

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