Surfing: Historic Images from the Bishop Museum Archives

Surfing: Historic Images from the Bishop Museum Archives by Brown, Desoto. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781581780437.

First in a series of pictorials to be offered from the Bishop Museum Archives, Surfing: Images from Bishop Museum Archives presents over 200 images of Hawaiis surfing history, many never before published. Rather than compile a simple history of the sport, author and Bishop Museum archivist DeSoto Brown, through years of careful research, includes and intersperses the photographs with descriptive text, historical notes, and interesting trivia to offer the reader new insight into the history of Hawaiis surfing heritage. The idea for Surfing grew out of Browns desire to share the wealth of images found in the Archives collection. After spending twenty years in the astonishing photo collection of the Archives, he feels that it is an invaluable, but vastly underutilized resource and had envisioned a day when the Museum could begin publishing books that highlighted these images. After many years of careful examination, that vision is now a reality with the publication of Surfing. The Bishop Museums archives also contain the largest collection of Duke Kahanamoku photographs in the world. Dukes wife Nadine had donated some of the images while she was still alive; the rest she bequeathed to the Museum in her will. The last section of Surfing focuses specifically on Duke, perhaps the worlds most legendary surfer. Brown felt that Duke, even today, is an international icon and a preeminent figure in the history of surfing, and wanted to share some of these images, a number of which have never been published before.