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Ted Grambeau on Capturing Tom Curren's Most Iconic Waves

Originally posted on SURFER | By Ben Mondy | Last updated Oct 21, 2024 7:22 AM ET

“I’ve had a few occasions when single waves of Tom Curren become culturally significant,” legendary lensman Tom Grambeau told SURFER. “It only happens retrospectively and so the photos become a documentation of a historical moment. At the time I usually thought, well, that is Tom just doing Tom things. That’s how genius works.”

No other photographer has documented more examples of Tom Curren’s genius. The Aussie was the senior photographer on all of Rip Curl’s Search expeditions and has been tracking Curren at close quarters for the better part of three decades.

“Tom’s first wave at J-Bay to me, was just another wave at J-Bay,” continued Ted. “But history has recorded it as one of the greatest waves ever surfed there. That meant the images became a documentation of a historical moment. Which is a bastard if you are terrible at cataloguing your photos, which I am.”

That session was in 1992. The footage, captured by Sonny Miller and featured in Searching For Tom Curren has retained iconic status ever since. Curren had never been to South Africa, having boycotted the ASP events from 1985 due to the country’s apartheid regime. When he did turn up, magic happened. Riding a Mark Rabbidge 6’6” quad it was a wave that was said to redefine the way Supers can be ridden. And Ted, as ever, was on the sand clicking away.

It didn’t always come easy though. “We were and are good friends, but he was a hard man to nail down. Tom would do what Tom would do, that was the deal,” laughed Ted. He recalled a trip when Curren was in Hawaii for three days and Rip Curl asked Ted to get an image of Tom in the barrel, wearing a new watch and boardshorts. Ted just laughed, thinking that even getting in to see him in three days would be impossible.

The next morning though, as Ted checked the surf at Off the Wall, he saw Tom getting spat out of an 8-foot wave at Backdoor. Thinking he had blown his only chance, he quickly set up a long lens and a polarizing filter to cut through the haze and started mirroring Curren from a distance. If Tom paddled to Off the Wall, Ted would scamper up to Rockpiles. After each wave he'd also put in a new roll of film, ensuring he had 36 shots in the locker for each chance.

“Then out of the blue, he scraped into a 10-foot bomb; the wave of the season. I was up high up, way back, at the perfect angle, away from the other photographers on the beach,” said Ted. “He rode the foam ball for half of the wave and I consider it one of the better waves ever surfed in terms of a flawless execution of tuberiding at Backdoor. I’d lucked into this position and I just started hammering away. Everyone else missed it."

The 36-shot sequence quickly became iconic.

Ted was also on hand for the famous 5’7” Fireball Fish session of Curren’s at the Indonesia wave of Bawa in 1993. Another Search trip that would feature in Miller’s film, Beyond the Boundaries, Curren and company rocked up to find one of Indonesia's premier big wave spots empty and perfect.

Curren initially paddled out on a 7’8” Dave Palmeeter and frustratingly for Ted, sat on the outside bowl, too far out to see, let alone shoot. After catching one wave in an hour, Curren returned to the boat and swapped the biggest board for the shortest - the Tom Peterson thruster Fireball that belonged to Frankie Oberholzer.

“Again, some people might call that creative genius, I just thought it was random craziness,” laughed Ted. “But I knew he could ride anything. I'd seen him borrow a kid’s board off the beach and go out and blow peoples' minds. I just kept the lens on him at all times. The rest is history.”

The resulting footage and images, in the movie and which featured a SURFER magazine article, would send minor ructions through the surfing world. It made the idea of riding small boards in big, barreling waves a possibility, a good 20 years before Kelly did the same at Pipeline. It also gave credence to the Fish, even if the board itself was far removed from the Steve Lis design.

“I’ve been lucky enough to be on hand a few times when Tom lit a touch paper for something much bigger and more meaningful than we knew at the time,” said Grambeau. “It was a privilege to watch him make magic happen. It would have happened anyway, that’s what Tom’s life is like in the water, but documenting it helped loads more surf fans see it too. I’ll take that.”

To see more of Ted’s work and purchase classic surf and ocean art prints head toTedGrambeauPhotography.com.