Catching Waves and Moments: The Legacy of Jeff Divine and LeRoy Grannis

Before surf culture became a global aesthetic and billion-dollar industry, it was a way of life—a subculture rooted in rebellion, nature, and sunburnt afternoons by the Pacific. Two photographers—Jeff Divine and LeRoy Grannis—froze that world in time, each with a different eye but the same reverence for the rhythm of the ocean and the tribes that followed it.

Jeff Divine started shooting in the late ‘60s, but his most iconic work chronicles the 1970s—an era when the hippie movement bled into surf culture, surfboards were handmade in garages, and hash-stashing was part of the trip. Divine was part of the crew. “I surfed first and then shot photos,” he once said. “Getting the shot became almost as fulfilling as getting the wave.”

Raised in La Jolla, Divine had access to the coast’s most iconic breaks—San Clemente, Oahu, Laguna Beach—and his lens captured it all with raw intimacy. Shooting for Surfer magazine, he documented a time before the commercial boom, when surfers were mystical, mud-splattered vagabonds more interested in chasing barrels than sponsorships. Divine’s photographs are less about performance and more about presence: sun-faded hair, psychedelic board art, bare feet in Baja sand. Through his work, you don’t just see surfing—you feel the lifestyle, the lingo, the pull of “Mother Ocean.”

Jeff Divine

But if Divine captured the soul of the ‘70s, LeRoy Grannis was the man who gave the ‘60s its surf image. A late bloomer by photography standards, Grannis picked up a camera at 42 and helped define the visual language of the scene. Nicknamed the “godfather of surf photography,” Grannis had a knack for balancing action and atmosphere. He was just as likely to photograph a longboarder gliding at Sunset Beach as he was to shoot wax-melting station wagons and surf shacks plastered with “Malibu or Bust.”

He was an innovator, too. Inspired by Jacques Cousteau, Grannis developed one of the first waterproof camera housings and even rigged a camera to the nose of a surfboard. That inventiveness—paired with a surfer’s intuition—let him shoot with a closeness and texture others couldn’t replicate. His images feel nostalgic not just because they’re in black-and-white, but because they radiate warmth, intimacy, and a tactile sense of place.

Both photographers were documentarians, but also stylists in their own right—showing that surf culture wasn’t just a sport, it was an art form. Grannis caught it during its transformation from cult to culture, and Divine captured its countercultural peak. Together, they mapped the evolution of an entire movement through their cameras.

LeRoy Grannis

It’s wild to think their work, once traded for a few bucks or published in niche zines, is now in gallery retrospectives and high-end coffee table books. But that’s the thing about surfing—it’s always been ahead of the curve.

As Pulitzer Prize-winner William Finnegan once said in a foreword to Divine’s work: “It was a moment when everything in our little world felt up for grabs.” Divine and Grannis didn’t just capture that moment—they gave it form, color, and eternal sunshine.