BEHIND SURF ABOUT
With Jack Eden - Surfer & Photographer
Photography
and the surf
Described by his friend Midget Farrelly as ‘the most important recorder of surf history in Australia’, Jack Eden started taking surf photographs in 1958 and diligently documented the golden years of surfing. He shot the majority of his images of the Australian surf scene between the late ’50s through to the late ’60s for use in his Cronulla based magazine Surfabout. Without really knowing it at the time, Eden was documenting the birth years of Australian surfing in those carefree times when the nation’s youth were ready to have some serious fun.
Eden’s photographs helped put the Southside surfers and local breaks like Cronulla Point, Sandshoes and Voodoo on the world map. His early black-and-white images captured surfing greats like Midget Farrelly, Kevin ‘The Head’ Brennan and Bobby Brown, and his portraits displayed an aesthetic edge, learnt in part through correspondence with legendary American photographer Ansel Adams.
The name Surfabout was adapted from the Aboriginal concept of ‘walkabout’, and the debut issue, which hit the streets in August 1962, was emblazoned with Aboriginal motifs. The first print run was 10,000 and sold out in a week, snapped up by surf hungry groms, and 24 issues were published between 1962 and 1968.
In terms of the history of Southside surf media, Jack Eden could be considered Chairman of the Board, but his influence also extended beyond Australia. He was the Australian correspondent for the American Surfer magazine under John Severson, and his photographs have been published in just about every surf magazine imaginable. Outside of the surfing world, Jack was in demand for his commercial and product images. In the1980s he received the title of ‘Hasselblad Master’ for his coverage of the 18-foot skiffs racing series on Sydney Harbour.
Jack Eden was inducted into the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame in 1996 for his
innovation and pioneering in surf photography and media, and in 2000 was awarded the Australian Sports Medal by the Queen for his contribution to surfing. Dawn and Jack Eden lived close to Cronulla Beach, where Jack liked to hang out with his old surfing friends right up to his final years. His Surfabout Revisited Collection is now held by the National Gallery in Canberra as a social commentary of the years between 1959 and 1970.
One of Jack Eden’s favorite subjects was the prodigiously talented Kevin ‘The
Head’ Brennan (1950–1975). Brennan was a classic Bondi boy of that era – a gifted
surfer, tough, damaged, lost – ‘a legend at fifteen and dead at twenty-five, a victim of the drug culture’.1 The photographs shown here were taken around the time that Midget
Farrelly won the first World Championships. The stories of the two surfers spanned the surf culture divide.
Brennan, dubbed ‘The Head’ because his head looked oversized for his scrawny frame, was ‘troublesome, jockey-sized, with an Irish pugnacity, an improper regard to discipline, a feral cunning and admirable deftness in the surf’.2 Robert Conneeley remembers him as “the most versatile, athletic, best balanced, could switch foot, ride backwards do virtually anything … seen him paddle out with a cigarette dry and ride the first wave and flick it when he got to the nose. He was a great talent.”3
In 1965, aged 15, Brennan won both New South Wales Senior and Junior Australian titles, a feat never repeated. But Bondi back in the 1960s was working-class, rough and unforgiving, and Brennan developed into a ‘devious petty criminal’.4
Although his cheeky grin ‘could beat a thousand raps, for a while’,5 his later years were a downward spiral of addiction and alienation. He died alone in Kings Cross aged 25 – an early casualty of the Australian surf scene – and ‘his death was mostly unmourned’.6
Source: John Ogden, Saltwater People of the Fatal Shore, p. 119.
1 Phil Jarrett, Australia’s Hottest 100 Surfing Legends, p.40.
2 Pete Bowes, petebowes.com/2010/11/24/kevin-the-head-brennan-does-breakfast/
3 Robert Conneeley interview with Matthew Elks, 2006: http://surfing.wikia.com/wiki/Robert_Conneely_(interview)
4 Phil Jarrett, Australia’s Hottest 100 Surfing Legends.
5 Phil Jarratt, Australia’s Hottest 100 Surfing Legends, p.40.
6 Peter Bowes, http://petebowes.com/2010/11/24/kevin-the-head-brennan-does-breakfast/