Surfing San Onofre to Point Dume: Photographs by Don James

Back in print and available from D.A.P. for the first time, this beloved best-seller tells the story of the heady and innocent years of Santa Monica´s nascent surf scene just prior to America´s entry into World War II. Beautifully designed, this intimate, album-sized collection of photographs, printed in rich duotones and evocative color, captures the optimism and experimentation, the styles, the flirtatiousness and the freedoms taken--all from an insider´s point of view. They were made by the young Don James, a teenager who documented the scene with his father´s old Kodak folding camera when he wasn´t up on a longboard himself. Out in the surf, down on the sand, aboard somebody´s boat, dancing around a campfire, back-flipping off the lifeguard stand, collecting lobster, drinking at the bar and generally wearing as little as possible, here are the regulars of the southern California beach scene, un-self-conscious and perpetually glamorous, alongside loving portraits of the beach and the ocean themselves.