Jack Brull

Jack Brull is an inspired New York surfer and pho­tog­ra­pher who sees the world through a low-fi cam­era. This unique approach yields images of drama and emo­tion that isn’t found with today’s dig­i­tal cam­eras. Brull was kind enough to share some of his expe­ri­ences both with his surf­ing and photography.

When did you get your first surf­board?
I got my first surf­board in about 1980. My mom and dad gave it to me for Christ­mas. I was about 15 years old. The board was a 6’10 sin­gle fin made by Char­lie Bunger here on Long Island. The board had the coolest blue fade air­brush on the bot­tom and the deck was white with a huge navy blue Light­ning Bolt lam. I wish I still had it—rounded pin­tail, wide point for­ward. Def­i­nitely a bit of a Lopez rip-off. I rode it for awhile and then traded it in when I real­ized thrusters were all the rage. What a mis­take as I’d prob­a­bly really enjoy that board these days.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
I remem­ber the first wave I caught. I was rid­ing a bor­rowed G&S sin­gle fin. The wave was about waist high and clean. It was a beau­ti­ful late spring morn­ing. That split sec­ond sen­sa­tion of slid­ing down that wave was unreal; I was prob­a­bly only up for a cou­ple of sec­onds, but I knew I was hooked big time.

Who/what inspires you?
I am inspired by any­one who is fully engaged in what­ever activ­ity they are pursuing—whether it be a job, art or surf­ing. I am inspired by peo­ple who are totally com­mit­ted to their pur­suits with a healthy dose of humil­ity and self-deprecating humor thrown in for good measure.

What is lo-fi? What type of cam­eras and film do you use?
Well, lo-fi pho­tog­ra­phy involves the use of extremely inex­pen­sive and poorly con­structed pho­to­graphic equip­ment. Most of the cam­eras I use were con­sid­ered toys when they were ini­tially pro­duced. The lenses are usu­ally made of cheap plas­tic and the cam­eras have very lim­ited con­trols related to aper­ture and shut­ter set­tings. To top it all off, the cam­eras are prone to extreme light leak­age requir­ing the use of elec­tri­cal or duct tape to make “light tight”.

I am cur­rently using vin­tage Diana cam­eras and Diana clones as well as mod­i­fied Kodak Brownie Hawk­eye cam­eras. Each cam­era has its unique funky quirks. I am cur­rently shoot­ing mostly Kodak tmax 400 for black and white and expired/outdated Ektachrome 100 or 200 for color work.

Why use these lo-fi cam­eras? They cer­tainly do not sound “user-friendly”.
You are right. These cam­eras are not at all “user-friendly” and they can be very frus­trat­ing at times. How­ever, I feel the use of lo-fi pho­to­graphic equip­ment is an incred­i­bly free­ing expe­ri­ence. The tools allow for spon­tane­ity, impul­siv­ity and happy acci­dents. The images pro­duced can look ragged while main­tain­ing a sim­plis­tic beauty. More­over, the images pro­duced often con­tain a cer­tain vis­ceral qual­ity to the moment I expe­ri­enced. The images from these cam­eras are softly-focused with lim­ited edge sharp­ness. The low light images pro­duced can look quite haunt­ing when cap­tured with an old Diana. I guess I feel that the lo-fi approach really suits the some­times harsh and uncom­fort­able con­di­tions asso­ci­ated with surf­ing in the Northeast.

Why have you cho­sen surf­ing as your pri­mary sub­ject mat­ter?
Well I guess I am aim­ing to visu­ally explore my day-to-day trips to the beach whether the daily expe­ri­ence is rather mun­dane and typ­i­cal or con­versely tran­scen­dently dynamic. When liv­ing in NYC, I used to do a lot of street pho­tog­ra­phy. Since I moved to the ‘burbs, I have been search­ing for a sub­ject mat­ter that both excites me and is very acces­si­ble. Surf­ing meets both of these criteria.

While the act of surf­ing and the process of tak­ing pho­tographs vary greatly in the expe­ri­ence of phys­i­cal sen­sa­tions, I would argue both acts have a defin­ing com­mon point. Both pur­suits require an atti­tude of bare atten­tion and a high level of mind­ful­ness to fully real­ize the given expe­ri­ence. For me, it is through this men­tal per­spec­tive that I truly open up to the con­tin­u­ally chang­ing qual­i­ties of my expe­ri­ences, whether it be the ever-changing dynamic expe­ri­ence of a wave-riding or the “see­ing” of the sub­tle qual­i­ties of our visual land­scape. Both pur­suits pro­vide the unique chal­lenges to me that pro­vide flow rewards.

What do you look for when shoot­ing images?
Well, I mostly I try to attend to the qual­ity of the light. I do most of my pho­tog­ra­phy pre-dawn or at dusk. Aside from the qual­ity of the light, I try to cap­ture a sense of still­ness that is occur­ring in a very dynamic environment.

I also like to try to cap­ture the many unique expe­ri­ences that I asso­ciate with surf­ing from start to finish—whether it is select­ing boards from the garage, the wax­ing of surf­boards, morn­ing surf check rit­u­als and the walks to and from the ocean. When shoot­ing surfers, I like to try to cap­ture the sense of antic­i­pa­tion prior to surf­ing and the sense of con­tent­ment and peace­ful­ness that most often occurs after a surf session.

Speak­ing of the surf­ing expe­ri­ence, what cur­rent boards are you rid­ing?
I ride mostly fish and logs, although I do love my Fine­line Microant II hull. Over the last four months or so, I have been attempt­ing to detox from dis­place­ment hulls. I got addicted quick but hulls com­pletely mess with your mind; they are so counter-intuitive to both fish and log surf­ing. I am now surf­ing them with caution.

My quiver includes a vin­tage 9’6” Hansen 50/50, a 9’8” Coop­erde­signs Mal­ibu Foil II, a 10’1 Coop­er­fish Nosedevil, 6’9” Josh Hall Long­fish Sim­mons, a 6’4” Chris­ten­son quad fish and a 6’2” Swift move­ment (Larry Mabile) twin keel and 7’6” Fine­line Microant II.

I really do not deserve such a nice quiver as my surf­ing is actu­ally really quite mediocre—as most of my friends will con­cur! I am try­ing to focus on improv­ing my log­ging and fish-riding at the moment.

What mean­ing does surf­ing hold for you and how has it changed your life?
I was recently side­lined from surf­ing for about six weeks due to pul­monary heart valve replace­ment pro­ce­dure. Dur­ing this time, I had the oppor­tu­nity to reflect and be thank­ful for what surf­ing has pro­vided me. For me, rid­ing a wave is an active state of med­i­ta­tion which pro­vides me with a pro­found sense of relax­ation and calm­ness, all the while remain­ing con­nected to such a dynamic and fluid envi­ron­ment as the ocean. Surf­ing has deep­ened my rela­tion­ships with friends and my brother, has pro­vided stress relief and brief peri­ods of retreat from my day-to-day respon­si­bil­i­ties. I feel bet­ter in gen­eral (spir­i­tual, men­tal, socially and phys­i­cally) when surf­ing regularly.

Who are some of the peo­ple you feel are shap­ing the path for surf­ing today?
I am prob­a­bly not one to com­ment on this as my over­all skill set is pretty lim­ited. But I guess I really dig the stuff Richard Ken­vin is doing. He has really opened things up with the Casper/Mini-Simmons stuff and his whole Hydro­dy­nam­ica trip. Is that movie ever com­ing out? I must have watched the trail­ers about a thou­sand times. As far as other surfers, I am blown away by Rasta, Dan Mal­loy, Dane Reynolds and Joel Tudor and the super 8 footage of Dirt at the ‘bu.

I also feel that shapers such as Rich Pavel, Gene Cooper and Greg Lid­dle have done so much to push the cur­rent surf­ing zeit­geist along in both an excit­ing and acces­si­ble way for the every day surfer. I am also really am inter­ested in the younger guys that are shap­ing such as Chris Chris­ten­son, Manny Caro and Josh Hall. These guys seem to have taken the best things out of older boards and pushed the given plat­form to new levels.

Lastly, I think film­mak­ers have really done a lot in terms of shap­ing the path for surf­ing. Andrew Kidman’s films blow me away as does some of the footage in One Cal­i­for­nia Day.

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently?
I have many regrets but as it per­tains to surf­ing, I really regret that I stopped surf­ing for many years. In my mid to late 20’s until my mid to late 30’s, I let life get in the way of one of the most healthy pur­suits I have ever expe­ri­enced. So many missed waves, so many missed oppor­tu­ni­ties … I wish I could have some of that time back. For­tu­nately, my brother Mar­tin got me back in the water about six years ago and it’s been incred­i­ble recon­nect­ing with some­thing so spe­cial. I wish I got to surf more with my other brother Tom, who passed away trag­i­cally ten years ago. He would have been so stoked on the res­ur­rec­tion of the twin keel and fish platform.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
Being home with my fam­ily, watch­ing my daugh­ter, Avery, learn some­thing new and being there for friends.

What’s your favorite meal?
Remem­ber, I am a New Yorker so I gotta say … PIZZA!!!!!!! Real qual­ity pizza! You godda prob­lem widt dat!!!

What are you cur­rently lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?
I love it all, but my favorites are Neil Young, Wilco, good old live Grate­ful Dead, John Coltrane and mid-fifties to early six­ties Miles Davis. Bands such as MMJ and the Hold Steady are also in heavy rota­tion. I am psy­ched to see the Felice Broth­ers in a cou­ple of weeks though!!!

What are you most grate­ful for?
My wife, Pjay, my daugh­ter, Avery, my fam­ily and my health.

What causes/organizations do you sup­port?
Well I am cur­rently involved in a non-profit foun­da­tion that has been estab­lished in mem­ory of my brother, Tom. My brother (Mar­tin) and sis­ter (Lau­ren) and our respec­tive spouses (Pjay, Shara and Rob, as well as a very good friend, Keith Luc­ch­esi) estab­lished the foun­da­tion in July of 2008. The Tommy Brull Foun­da­tion Inc. aims to raise money to sup­port indi­vid­u­als in our com­mu­nity that are deal­ing with unique phys­i­cal, men­tal or emo­tional chal­lenges. We do a yearly benefit/auction that has raised a sig­nif­i­cant amount of money that we have given away to char­i­ta­ble causes. The local surf com­mu­nity has been so gen­er­ous with sup­port­ing our cause. Local surf shops (unsound, Mol­lusk, Mar­itime, Bunger, RVC surf) as well as local pho­tog­ra­phers (Tommy Colla, Matt Clark, Mike Nel­son, and Susan­nah Ray) have been super gen­er­ous in donat­ing art. Big­ger com­pa­nies have also joined to help (Smith Optics and Vans) to name a few. This year we also had the honor of hav­ing Andrew Kid­man per­form at the ben­e­fit. It was really quite special.

What’s next for Jack Brull?
Well as far as surf­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy, I am just gonna keep doing what I am doing—just shoot film when­ever I can and not take it all too seri­ously. I am hop­ing to accu­mu­late a ton of negs and really edit them down to a small vol­ume of images I feel best rep­re­sent my rea­son for doing this. It’s all a work in progress for me and I can see how it has been evolv­ing over the last year. Once the water warms up again, I want to stick my crappy cam­eras in some ghettoed-up water hous­ing (sealed freezer bags), put on some Churchills on and get in the water. Right now, it’s tough to manip­u­late these crappy lit­tle cam­eras with 7 mil mit­tens on.

I’d also like to get my work out there more for peo­ple to see. I really value the input and con­struc­tive crit­i­cism I have received from peo­ple who have viewed my work up close and per­sonal. Over the last year, I have had the sev­eral oppor­tu­ni­ties to hang my work and its been a great expe­ri­ence. Any­one inter­ested in show­ing my work … I am all ears!!!

Find out more about Jack Brull and his pho­tog­ra­phy here.