“ I Just Wanna Surf” captures the struggle of finding one’s identity and community during the pandemic and the post-George Floyd era in a sport dominated by white men. Having grown up in one of the only mixed-race Black families in a small coastal town in Orange County, Angotti-Jones reflects on how her early relationship with the ocean and California surf culture intertwined with her identity as a Black woman.
In a blend of photo book, zine, and personal journal, Angotti-Jones challenges the traditional narrative of surfing by documenting Black women and non-binary surfers who lived this lifestyle in the 1990s and early 2000s, while making it their own. The images juxtapose the joy of friendship and the refuge found in the wildness of the ocean with the underlying racial tensions at the heart of the Black American experience. With sensitivity and vulnerability, her text explores her experience with depression and the sense of peace that surfing brings.
Through this photographic body of work, * *, the artist unveils a joyful, raw, complex, and unique expansion of the visual history of the Black American experience and its place within a rapidly changing American surfing community.
Published by Mass Books, 2022
19 cm 23.5 cm, 144 pages
ISBN
“ I Just Wanna Surf” captures the struggle of finding one’s identity and community during the pandemic and the post-George Floyd era in a sport dominated by white men. Having grown up in one of the only mixed-race Black families in a small coastal town in Orange County, Angotti-Jones reflects on how her early relationship with the ocean and California surf culture intertwined with her identity as a Black woman.
In a blend of photo book, zine, and personal journal, Angotti-Jones challenges the traditional narrative of surfing by documenting Black women and non-binary surfers who lived this lifestyle in the 1990s and early 2000s, while making it their own. The images juxtapose the joy of friendship and the refuge found in the wildness of the ocean with the underlying racial tensions at the heart of the Black American experience. With sensitivity and vulnerability, her text explores her experience with depression and the sense of peace that surfing brings.
Through this photographic body of work, * *, the artist unveils a joyful, raw, complex, and unique expansion of the visual history of the Black American experience and its place within a rapidly changing American surfing community.
Published by Mass Books, 2022
19 cm 23.5 cm, 144 pages
ISBN
