John Severson, trailblazer of surf media and culture, dies

John Severson, a pioneer of modern surf culture who founded Surfer magazine in 1962 and created paintings, films and photographs depicting the surfing lifestyle, died Friday at his home outside Lahaina on Maui.

Surfing was a niche sport in the United States when Mr. Severson, having surfed on a redwood board in his native Southern California as a teenager, set out to portray its essence as a counter to the 1959 Hollywood film “Gidget” (a forerunner of the 1960s beach party films with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello) and the early music of the Beach Boys, which he regarded as a “cheap, honky look at surfing.”

Wannabes came into the sport as rebels, pranksters, vandals, and thieves, wearing Nazi imagery — helmets and iron crosses.

Drew Kampion, editor of Surfer magazine from 1968 to 1972, said in an interview Saturday that he viewed Mr. Severson, who preceded him as its editor, as “the first to treat surfing as a worthy subject matter for fine art.”

Mr. Severson likened the surfing experience to “a beautiful sensation of dance with the added dimension of being in nature.”

Surfer, the first major magazine devoted to wave riding, began as an annual publication, then became a quarterly and finally a monthly.

[...] his publishing obligations were becoming excessively consuming, and he was confronted by restrictions on his favorite surfing spot.

The Secret Service, citing security concerns, sought to close public access there when Nixon was visiting.

Mr. Severson spoke with top White House aides to discuss a compromise on surfing hours but remained discouraged at having to battle for unfettered access.

Mr. Severson’s “Surf BeBop,” a semiabstract painting of surfers lounging on a beach, which appeared on a 1963 cover of Surfer, was cited by Communication Arts magazine as the most outstanding cover painting of the year.