Shooting surf since 1965
Chris Klopf was born in 1950 and grew up in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, among the redwoods. He started shooting surf photos in 1965 and taught himself in the darkroom. By 1970 his photos were running in the surf magazines.
Through the 1970s he lived in Santa Cruz, the Bay Area and Santa Barbara, and made regular trips to the North Shore. A job at Hamm's Brewery in San Francisco helped: workers were laid off every couple of weeks, which left him free to travel and shoot.
Bustin Out came out in 1990. Through the 1990s his films followed the best surfers of the time: Kelly Slater, Tom Curren, Tom Carroll and Johnny Boy Gomes in No Exit and Raw Power, then Kalani Robb, Rob Machado and a young Andy Irons in Wet Cement and Wet Cement 2. Wanderers, The Exploders and 2000 Generation took the crew to Tahiti, South Africa, Peru, Mexico and Indonesia.
In 1999 he made Classical Gas, a longboard film with Joel Tudor, Bonga Perkins and CJ Nelson. Nomads, Lunar Road, Time Warp, Walls of Glass and Style Mongrels followed, with a new generation of single-fin riders like Tyler Warren and Robin Kegel.
He has published the photo books Shooting the Decades and Alternate Visions.
