The Art of Being Seen

“Despite history, we can forge ahead and create pathways for what we want to see now and in the future.”
—Chelsea Woody

any surfers fetishize the past. We look at photos of uncrowded Malibu in the ‘50s, the Rincon cove before it was fronted by a six-lane highway, and think, “Yep, those were the days.” Even those of us who weren’t actually alive then—probably us younger generations—imagine those periods of light crowds and less development as surfing’s golden era. (Hell, this magazine has waxed romantic about surfing’s past as much as anyone, and as recently