The Surfers Journal
Light / Dark
Matt Wessen is rapid-firing away about the time he was held hostage at gunpoint by the gypsy mafia in Romania. I, on the other hand, am beginning to wonder if I’ve lost the plot. This was intended to be a profile on the LA-based artist’s photographic work, but clearly things are shaking out a bit differently. Earlier, we’d been talking about formative inspirations and how Wessen came to be a Santa Monica-born surfer and disruptive creative force. Someone who Barry McGee—a fellow multimedia virtuoso and celebrated contrarian—labels as the “foremost artist working today in capturing the LA underground.”
As we crisscross Lincoln Boulevard on a clear fall morning between spot checks and prep work for Wessen’s upcoming, massively ambitious Venice Beach showcase, we dig into the crux of how he learned the photography business. Thusly, our conversation has arrived at the sketchy happenings that took place on the set of The Honorable Brigand, a film he worked on in Eastern Europe.
Wessen’s face is sun-lined, but still handsome. Sandy-blonde hair peeks out from a hand-knit beanie. He’s sporting a long black trench coat and riot boots. Hanging a left into a beach lot, we can see the pier is doing its usual thing—meaning 2- to 3-feet and fair to poor. But it’s also 80 degrees, the water a deep shade of blue, and the day’s glassy conditions not yet disturbed. To be a surfer in LA.
Between steady rips off a Marlboro Red, Wessen elaborates on the Romanian situation. “So I have to choose right then,” he says. “I’m in the back of this mafia guy’s Porsche, and I have to decide whose side I’m on—the director who brought me on the project, or the guy with the Desert Eagle.”
He pauses for effect. “I’m going with the Desert Eagle straight up, ya know what I mean?” I don’t exactly, but I’m not going to derail this backstory either. The problem with this fateful decision, however, was that it led straight to a windowless room in a communist-style housing block. Locked inside, Wessen was told to come up with a not-insubstantial amount of the production monies if he ever wanted to see the sky again.
As the tale winds down, I finally see that Wessen is ultimately arriving at his brain-rewiring discovery of Robert Rauschenberg’s Combine series (1954-1964), which he saw in Paris as he was licking his wounds upon release from that hellish, Bucharest cell. “All of a sudden my mind fucking exploded,” Wessen says. “Rauschenberg put objects together to tell a different story than the object would have singularly. Simple, yet so complicated. Such a statement, but at the same time not a statement. I think it heavily influenced where I’m at now.”
That seminal Rauschenberg exhibit—a radical blend of painting and sculpture, materials and methods—taught Wessen about the power of “dimensionality,” how to assemble unconventional elements to create something holistic, original. And it taught him the means to harness friction to explore opposing themes in his art. Skip Engblom, Venice don and a surf/skate icon, calls Wessen a friend and frequent collaborator. “Matt’s ability to look at stuff is really unique,” he says. “It’s almost like he’s painting with his camera. To classify him as only a photographer would not be valid.”
A juxtaposition of disparate elements at play would be a familiar notion for anyone who has gone for a dip in the greater LA Basin, which, as McGee calls it, is a surfing experience with “beauty and mayhem, all at once.” One could argue the birthplace of the modern slider happened here, when Freeth hopped over to show us pasty mainlanders the ropes. Modern board production rose up in Hermosa Beach, El Segundo, and elsewhere. There was Da Bull, doing his thing for a time, and Dora his, over at Surfrider. More people live in this industrial-grade stretch of irrigated desert called LA County than 41 states in the Union—10 million souls and counting. Making up its borders are Palos Verdes to the south, San Gabriel valley to the east, and a whole bunch of other “Valleys” to the north. Malibu’s truly magnificent “21 miles of scenic beauty” basks within these confines. The highest number of millionaires in the nation live here, in addition to the highest number of homeless people.
These days, LA feels removed from the “surf industry,” out of step with the “culture” being produced down the 405 Freeway. It’s a land of no stickers and proficient talent, at best. To be a surfer in LA County is to slip and slide on endless bad waves with 200 of your closest friends. It means picking off a few before the onshores come up, then hightailing it out before the meter maid makes the rounds and the 10 East goes nuclear. Yet to be a surfer here also means astounding beauty, classic setups, and a still-thriving legacy of independent style, ethos, and boardcraft.
It’s this age-old gridlock of rich and poor, paradise and pavement, beach and neon that forms the eternal dichotomy of Los Angeles that Matt Wessen calls home. Here in perhaps the most photographed place in the world, it takes someone like Wessen with local knowledge, commitment, and a gonzo eye to capture the great allure of this existence—the fairytales and the grime, the shit and the shine, apparent all at once. Or, as the LA Tourism Board calls it, “something for everyone.”
Raised on local pointbreaks, winter trips north up Highway 1, and vacations in the Islands, surfing is in Wessen’s blood. An old photo of Papa Wessen surfing with Rabbit Bartholomew is proudly displayed in his parent’s house in the Palisades. A standout grom in the local scene, Wessen picked up his first camera, a Super 8, in high school, experimenting in DIY filmmaking with his buddies. After a lost semester at college in Hawaii, where he spent more days clocking in at Pipe than in the classroom, Wessen returned to the Mainland, transferring to Brooks Institute (now defunct) in Santa Barbara. There, Wessen dove into his craft, learning to shoot 16mm and partnering with now Hollywood director Will Eubank to test drive various Panavision-supplied digital prototypes.
Wessen came to be a Santa Monica-born surfer and disruptive creative force. Someone who Barry McGee—a fellow multimedia virtuoso—labels as the “foremost artist working today in capturing the LA underground.”
It was also in Santa Barbara that Wessen fell in with a crew of surfers more interested in alternative displays of style, flow, and poise than in full-frontal assault. Wessen has a fond memory of playing H-O-R-S-E out in the water with Bobby Martinez and Tarik Khashoggi, where they’d call out in advance the move they would attempt on the ensuing wave. “Obviously I lost,” Wessen says and grins.
Of most importance to his time in Santa Barbara was the lesson of self-expression—the creative license among his peers to take risks and experiment—without fear of judgment. Commitment to fully realizing one’s vision is paramount in Wessen’s opinion, along with surrounding oneself with the energy and support in order to achieve it.
“The thing I like about Matt,” says legendary surf photographer Bob Barbour, a friend and mentor of Wessen’s, “is that he knows who he is. He’s bubbling over with ideas, but he’s focused. That comes out in his photography, too.”
Experimenting with photo and video production, Wessen got his hands on an old Pentax 67, a “kind of war photographer thing, super heavy.” A medium format camera, the Pentax makes use of a larger type of film than that of standard 35mm. The other main benefits of medium format is a much higher resolution, with better depth of field. On the flipside, the larger film size makes printing a roll of film more expensive, while being limited to only 10 shots per roll.
Mastering the Pentax taught Wessen the value in not pulling the trigger, of waiting to find the right moment and only then going for the shot. The goal was to get one shot per roll worth one’s salt. The discipline necessitated by the Pentax’s analog components also taught him the importance of putting a subject at ease. “People weren’t afraid of it,” he says. “They knew the lengthy process to get the prints back. That allowed them to be more true to themselves.”
It’s Wessen’s intimate understanding of the benefits of film versus digital, honed from experimentation with composition, light, and print technique that gives his work such relevance. Again, Barbour: “Matt’s an old soul. He has an appreciation for film and for the past, for how guys shot before. I don’t see that coming from a lot of young photographers anymore. I think that gives him tremendous depth, and is why his work is so interesting.”
It took some dark times before Wessen’s artistic direction fully developed. As he jumped into a trajectory of pursuing career-minded activities, including plush gigs in New York and elsewhere, things took a turn. He found himself on the island of Crete, running an artist commune, where he had an out-of-body experience in an ancient Cretan amphitheater. The mind-trip demolished the day job path he’d laid out for himself. “That ambition of being in NYC and doing all this crazy shit for Vanity Fair and Vogue slid away,” he says. “I realized I had built a house of cards and not a foundation.”
Decamping to Baja, Wessen “embraced emptiness” while living in an old bus on the point at Scorpion Bay, slowly building himself back up. When he was ready to return, his purpose was clear: “I said ‘I’m only going to do it this way—via the anti-falsehood of things, built on principles and truth.’ Because the opposite would be a return to the house of cards.”
Moving home to LA with a renewed clarity of purpose, Wessen soon found himself in love with, then married to, the person who would be the benevolent force in his life, his wife Anna. She provided the missing piece of the puzzle for Wessen—a partner who could underwrite his visions and offer critical analysis. For a self-professed “psycho nutjob” like Matt, Anna also provided a much-needed balance. As Wessen says, “she’s behind it all,” the sounding board and logistical support he needed to crystallize his ideas and turn them into actionable steps.
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The Los Angeles of this decade is going through, as Wessen describes it, a “psychotic renaissance.” Demand and proliferation for content has exploded, as has the influx of tech dollars and personnel. A city that doesn’t care about professional footbal now has two NFL teams. The Olympics are on their bloated way. The drip-drip-drip of NYC transplants has intensified, shifting the eye of the art world out west from its familiar East Coast confines. Social media has become the primary mode of communicating one’s daily goings-on. It’s within this new digital landscape that Wessen returned. “I went to go in and interview for a creative director role, but because I didn’t have social media, I didn’t get the gig. That was the breaking point.” Having traveled on a path thus far by referrals and happenstance, Wessen realized that a change in tactics was necessary.
Here in perhaps the most photographed place in the world, it takes someone like Wessen with local knowledge, commitment, and a gonzo eye to capture the great allure of this existence—the fairytales and the grime, the shit and the shine, apparent all at once.
Enter Instagram. The platform has proven to have seismically altered the surf video and photography medium, capturing in bite-sized chunks all the wild aerials, Code Red swells, and kook slams with equal aplomb. For Wessen, the app has become an effective tool for documenting his zone’s folly, complexity, and fleeting perfection. “Anna and I studied ‘the Gram’ and how people reacted to it, their addiction. Then we said, ‘Ok, based upon the human mind, we need to first fulfill a curiosity, second give information, and third make it so hyper-focused that people can get behind it.’”
Wessen looked for an ownable angle. The point of difference, it turned out, was a massive stockpile of images he wasn’t even showing people at the time: his documentation of the underground belly of LA County’s surf culture. For Matt, the archive also explored the larger, contemporary themes of the LA experience: that anything was possible in a city built on sun-bleached fantasies, “but that it’s layered in smegma,” he says.
In the bio section of his Instagram profile is a description of intent: “A retrospective look into the duality of Los Angeles surf culture, the most polluted city in the United States surrounded by unparalleled beauty.” Each upload is copy stamped with the concise “LA County,” leaving no doubt as to the focus. Time of year, swell direction, season, spot—none of that matters. The purpose, Wessen says, is to be objective. “That’s the scene. I don’t try to give the viewer too much or too little.”
“Matt’s LA County series is brutally honest,” Barry McGee comments, “with all the significant layers of smog, dust, and grime intact. The [images] feel ephemeral, urgent, sometimes desperate, yet always beautiful. I look to Matt when I want to know what is the truth, all unfiltered, with the vices and problematic areas still unvarnished.”
The images Matt has curated for LA County aren’t “instant.” They are the result of 20-plus years traversing a particular stretch of coast, putting in the roadwork and avoiding the hype days, combined with a fanatical dedication to studying the local weather charts. Anna and Matt devised the goal of LA County to be a multi-year retrospective, to “prove the point through the edit.”
When I ask Wessen why he didn’t go with “LA” as the framework and title for much of his shared photo work, he answers with as cooly a rationale as you might imagine. “LA is more like Kobe, Tupac, or Kirk Gibson hitting the home run,” he says. “By labeling it as ‘LA County’ all of a sudden it gives you a road map, a sense for the geography.”
A glance at many of the surfers and other well-worn faces that populate Wessen’s work is to note a fantastic study of style and character. What he looks for in his subjects prior to pulling the trigger is the emotional element. “I love the people that don’t rip that hard,” he says, “but have a certain swagger about them. They’re 100 percent engaged in that moment and feeling it.” At their loftiest, Wessen’s pictures evoke a timelessness of setting, the shutter catching a moment of soulful form that feels one frame removed from what any other photographer would designate as the hero shot.
Conversely, much of LA County also focuses on the absurdity of the culture en masse—the party-wave madness, bathtub foamies, and the pummeled and sunburnt flatliners nodding off in the sand from last night’s adventures. Much of his best use of dimensionality comes through in the black comedy of these vignettes, harkening back to the Rauschenberg influence. Wessen will stack a series of visual layers into each frame, revealing a larger commentary when taken in as a whole. “He has that wonderful ability to combine all the elements into something fresh,” says Barbour.
As a result, Wessen’s photography can have a spellbinding power—an offhand noir, causing one to question the authenticity of the images. A shot of empty, wind-groomed North County invites study again and again for clues as to the why and the how, a small window of perfection missed by its viewer. Maybe we were sitting in traffic at the time or it inevitably turned onshore. Or perhaps the lemmings arrived. “There’s that Tinseltown element in play,” says Wessen, “of trying to tell a story that’s real, but also unattainable, like a movie.”
To the eye of a discerning LA native, his pictures seem to successfully capture the duality of the LA experience, one that balances healthy doses of cynicism with compassion. They are the images dancing inside an LA surfer’s eyelids: soaring palm trees, glass-offs, smog days, rifling Santa Ana winds, and circus crowds.
Wessen is keenly aware of his place in documenting the now of LA County, while remaining a student of the region’s history and rich visual aesthetic. This has extended to other endeavors in preserving Angeleno culture, namely the LA County Historical Society, which he recently founded with Anna. Dedicated to the preservation, study, and dissemination of the county’s evolving creative culture, the LACHS has partnered with Skip Engblom to put on an impassioned curatorial showcase of over 50 artists handpicked from the region, titled Industry of Meaning. The intent of the Venice-based exhibition is to “show some love” for what’s always been here, historically swept under the rug of the prevailing critique of, “yes there’s a scene, but it’s not New York.”
They are the images dancing inside an LA surfer’s eyelids: soaring palm trees, glass-offs, smog days, rifling Santa Ana winds, and circus crowds.
What LA still provides for Wessen is inspiration. “The thing that keeps me here,” he says, “is all the people who are down for their trip. They’re doing it however it needs to be done. There’s a peripheral support of creativity here, a lot of encouragement to keep going.”
“Matt and I are kind of the same guy separated by 30 years,” says Engblom. “We both look at LA as something that’s vital and needs to be documented as this living, breathing entity that needs to be preserved. And we both look at surfing as this amazing thing that God gave us the ability to do.”
As Los Angeles continues on with its cultural transformation, I remain struck by old photos of PCH snaking up and down the coast—images covering the walls of countless salty beach joints, or found in a coffee table book. They are the visual snapshots of a time unrelatable—of ghost piers, pristine waterfronts, and muddy divots on a two-lane thruway. It’s puzzling to think that such a time existed in a place that is now endless sprawl. There were magic moments then, and there are magic moments now—only finding them is a little harder. Wessen is up for the task, however.
I wonder if in 50 years, people will be come upon Matt’s LA County work hanging in a home, on a gallery wall, in a magazine, on a hard drive, and stare at these profound images with equal wonderment at an old Los Angeles, just out of grasp.
In the meantime, there’s work for Wessen to do, full tilt toward maximum expression and new mediums to explore. He’s got the next 40 years already mapped out in his head. Of course, there’s surf to be had as well. As we make the call on the offerings at the local pier, he relays some wisdom the old timers handed down to him: “Get as many as you can before you die.”
[Feature image: “Mikey,” driving north in a La Niña rainstorm, 2017.]
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