Surfing Photography By LeRoy Grannis

He was elected to the International Surfing Hall of Fame as the number one lensman in 1966 and in 2002 was awarded SIMA's Lifetime Achievement Award. Grannis was the subject of The Surfer's Journal's first ode to master photographers in 1998 with a 1998 hardback compilation of Grannis' 1960s photos entitled Photo:Grannis, and his work was later featured in Stacy Peralta's 2004 award-winning documentary of the sport, Riding Giants. In 2005, M+B Gallery in Los Angeles gave Grannis his first art gallery exhibition and since then, his photographs have been exhibited at galleries, art fairs and museums both at home and abroad, including New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London and Antwerp. In 2006, TASCHEN published LeRoy Grannis: Birth of a Culture as a limited-edition, signed collector's edition monograph. Due to the extreme popularity of the book, TASCHEN has since released two additional popular editions of the book.
As said by Jason Borte, "Leroy Grannis wasn't the first to depict the California lifestyle with his photos. It wasn't his idea to begin shooting in the first place. His contributions to surfing photography occurred over a brief 12-year period, and he hasn't much bothered with it since 1971. Nevertheless, most of the great images from the '60s golden age of surfing, regardless of the magazine, bear the inscription "Photo: Grannis". In 1971, fed up with increased competition for the perfect angle, Grannis quit shooting surfing and soon found himself involved in hang gliding. The sport replaced surfing in his life, and he held a brief stint as photographer for Hang Gliding magazine. Several injuries, including a badly fractured leg in 1981, caused him to find a new outlet. This time it was windsurfing. Until the late '80s, Grannis both engaged in and photographed the sport.
Grannis moved with his wife to Carlsbad, California after retiring from Pacific Bell in 1977. Grannis married Katie LaVerne Tracy in 1939, when she was 20, and the couple had four children- Kit, Frank, Nancy, and John, six grandchildren- Robert, Cindy, Alan, Elizabeth, Alana, and Kaylee, and three great-grandchildren- Casey, Emily, and Dane, and two great-great grandchildren during their 69-year marriage before Katie died on December 3, 2008, at age 89.