What: Three Exhibition
Where: The LCB Surf Store, 121 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 7DG / 0207 739 3839
When: 25th June – 14th August 2008

The LCB surf shop in London’s Brick Lane will be host to an exhibition of travel surf photography by three female photographers this July.

Friends of Cooler, photographers Lucia Griggi, Kate Czuczman and Mel Enright met via the British surfing scene. They bonded through their love of travelling and surfing and have now decided to collaborate on an exhibition that showcases their individual approaches to documenting global surf culture.

With each photographer having a distinctive style and approach to the same ‘surf’ subject matter, the exhibition will show how a shared experience, in some cases in the same location, can result in individual, contrasting work by using different photographic styles.

Lucia is one of a small handful of women in the world to have broken through the male dominated ranks of surf photographers and she is the only female photographer in the UK whose work regularly appears in the core surf magazines, including Cooler magazine. A regular on the surf circuit for the last seven years, she admits that: “Surfing has inspired me to photograph. I love the people and the ocean.” Lucia brings these two aspects together in series of photographs, which capture different facets of the surfing lifestyle. The exhibition will also feature some of Lucia’s images laminated onto surfboards and other objects.

Travels with her surf travel company Big Friday took Kate to surfing destinations from South West England to Hawaii. Along the way she picked up an insatiable thirst for ‘old school’ cameras and different film formats. Kate’s analogue line-up includes a Rolleicord, lomo LCA, Holga, and her favourite Polaroid sx-70. Inspired by the bold colour contrasts of the midday sun through to expired lazy hues from the golden hour, Kate’s images are each unique glimpses of a surfing lifestyle.

Mel started documenting her travels on a six-month surfing sabbatical five years ago. The trip resulted in her first exhibition ‘Horizon’s of Blue and Gold’ in London in 2006. Shooting on digital, Nikon D70, Mel is interested in the powerful natural beauty of the surfing sea, landscape and people; the play of light, bold colour and pattern. Mel’s work is a contrast of romantic and contemporary images and has been published in a whole host of top mags.

All the photographers wanted to give something back to the environments which have provided such beautiful source material, so a percentage of sales will be donated back to the Kokua Foundation, a non-profit organisation that supports environmental education in the schools and communities of Hawai’i. The Kokua Foundation is based on the North Shore of Oah’u; a surfing mecca that all three photographers have visited and been inspired by.