Chris Bickford

I’ve been wanting to do a project around the surf culture on the Outer Banks for years: something that captures the essence of lives spent following stormclouds and obsessing about wind forecasts and tide timetables to catch a few hours of good swell…something that expresses what it feels like to live on this strip of sand and be involved in a perpetual conversation with the forces of nature at their most basic and elemental.

There are better places in the world to live if you just want to surf–Hawaii, Indonesia, Southern California, Costa Rica…the list goes on and on, and many denizens of the OBX will spend large portions of their lives chasing waves in other parts of the world. But most of them come back, not so much for the surf, I don’t think, as much as for the personality of the place. Not the culture, for there is little of that here. I’m talking about the personality of the spirits that inhabit this place: the wind, the clouds, the sand, the seagrass, the stumps of driftwood, the weathered cedar shakes on houses that could tell some killer storm stories if they could talk.

The surf here is unpredictable, to put it kindly. The sandbars shift after every big storm, necessitating a never-ending vigilance for the “new spot.” We remember past years in terms of where the good sandbars were. Laundromats, Buccaneer, the north side of Avalon Pier…to the casual observer these places would not seem remarkable, indistinguishable bits of an endless stretch of straight beach in either direction as far as the eye can see. But to guys who live to suf the Outer Banks, each spot has a different personality, and every sandbar is unique and always changing.

Tide, wind, and storms are a constant source of conversation, and hurricane season brings an added sense of anticipation–which more often than not ends in disappointment, as the storm heads inland to drench Florida or batter the Gulf Coast, or gathers speed and peters out once it hits colder water. Generally there’s plenty of swell, between the nor’easters, the offshore low pressure systems, and the named storms in the fall. It’s the conditions that are elusive: a prevailing northeast wind in the winter makes for sloppy seas, a prevailing southwest in the summer can keep the surf about ankle-high for weeks on end…the perfect combination of good swell, a light west wind, and a good sandbar at low tide haunts surfers’ dreams here like visions of the holy grail. But it does come, and plenty often. You just have to look for it, and the more you look, the more you find. And in the meantime you can surf the sloppy stuff or bust out your longboard when it’s knee-high and clean as cut glass…

It’s hard sometimes to do a project in your hometown. The demands of the day, or social obligations, or just plain laziness conspire to keep projects like this on the back burner forever. Add to that the fact that when the surf is good, you usually want to surf, not take pictures. But certain sacrifices have to be made for the sake of art…Life is so difficult sometimes, these decisions that plague mankind: surf or take pictures, surf or take pictures…

The following photos are sketches more than anything. I’m trying to get a sense of the palette of the project. This summer the surf has been particularly flat, and hurricane season has so far not produced anything epic. The few good days we’ve had, I’ve been working, or out of town…or surfing…But I’ve managed to get a few photos that hint at how I’ve been imagining it. Black-and-white, moody, a little nostalgic…the sense of how the Outer Banks was “back in the day”…again, that’s something that haunts us all as well. In some ways, it’s always back in the day around here and not much really changes, other than the sandbars. Drive down to Pea Island and points south and it still looks the same way it did when Blackbeard roamed this coast. But at the same time, there is a pervading sense that it was so much better around here ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. Back when great beachfront bars like Atlantis and Papagayo’s and the Carolinian were still around, and up-and-coming bands made regular appearances. When the locals ruled the roost and tourism was still centered around couples, young families, and small mom-and-pop oceanfront hotels. When there was plenty of construction work to keep every surfer and fisherman employed year-round…when the road to Corolla was still just a sand track. Old-timers will tell you that the fishing was so much better, and that you couldn’t dip a bucket into the ocean without filling it to the top with giant jimmy crabs…and some will even boast that the surf was better. All the good storms go south now, global warming maybe…

But enough of that. I’m not sure how literal I’m going to get with that sense of nostalgia. Right now it’s enough to just get out there more with water camera and swimfins, and see what happens. But at least, at last, I’ve started.