Released in 1992, Taylor Steele‘s “Momentum” was a game-changing surf film for a lot of reasons, most notably that it put one Robert Kelly Slater and the subsequently nicknamed Momentum Generation squarely on the map. That summer the group of 17 and 18-year-old friends had crashed at Steele’s parents’ house in San Diego for the summer to stack clips.
Slater, Shane Dorian, Ross Williams, Taylor Knox and Rob Machado were among the friends that circulated through the zone. Establishing a trend of crashing at parents homes, the previous winter on the North Shore they’d all hunkered down together at Benji Weatherly’s mom’s house in front of Pipeline. They’d found Steele sleeping in a van out front and appointed him their defacto filmer (this is in the days before surfers had their own private “filmers).
“Our only motivation was to impress one another. That meant surfing beyond our abilities, which then resulted in getting good clips for Taylor’s movie,” recalled Williams. “It meant getting good photos for the magazines too, but more and more the VCR was our medium of choice.”
“The battle was definitely egged on by Taylor, as well as the magazines and sponsors. It was all designed to get us to surf harder and perform at our best,” Williams explained. “We all thrived on it.”
Among those that thrived in the competitive yet casual environment was Weatherly. Not necessarily the contest savant that his peers were, he was a lights out freesurfer with a good-natured, surfy sense of humor. Skip ahead a decade and Slater’s amassed five straight world titles between 1994 and 1998. By 2001, he was “retired” and looking for direction, while Weatherly was just coming into his own.
“That winter I had the opportunity to go to the North Shore to shoot some Rusty ads with Tyler Callaway. One afternoon we went down to Benji‘s mom‘s house right at Pipe to shoot some catalog work and meet some of the boys,” recalls photographer Steve Sherman, who’s been nailing surfing behind-the-scenes moments for decades.
“The surf was pumping, 8- to 12-foot Third Reef Pipe. I noticed Benji grabbing his Pipe board and heading down to the waters edge to paddle out. As he was sitting there waiting for a lull, he looked over to see the guy next to him quickly jump on the water to paddle. It was Pipe legend Mike Akima. Benji looks at me deadpan and says, ‘That guy is my hero I got a follow ’em,'” Sherm continues.
“As Benji waited into the water I took a few quick shots as the Third Reef was going off in the background. At the time I shot this I was super influenced by this incredible photographer artist Matt Mahurrin. He was doing this really beautiful black and white with soft edges, very moody. So, I had my own filter on the camera to make things more dramatic. When I got home to California and developed the rolls this shot of Benji stood out. The next morning I ran into my friend David Carson, who is an incredible art director. He had just taken over at SURFER as the head designer and was also working on Rusty’s ads. He looked at it and said, ‘Sherm, can I take your print t to work with me today?'”
Steve Sherman
“I said, ‘No problem.'”
“A few days later, he called me and said it had been mocked up for the cover. At the time I was working full-time for Transworld Skateboarding and making films for Powell Peralta with Stacey and Craig Stecyk. I was doing nothing in the surf world. It was on the cover until the very last moment. I was told the publisher pulled it at the last second because it was black-and-white and they didn’t think it would sell on the newsstand. I did get a consolation prize, though, of a couple of spreads of my black-and-white photos.”
Magazine making can be a messy process, and sometimes, especially when it comes to picking covers, hearts get broken. Undeterred, Sherm’s been behind the lens for the last 25 years nailing some of surfing’s most intimate moments … like this one of Benji.
Related: Photographer Steve Sherman Looks Back On His Momentum Generation Masterpiece
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