It’s fair to say John Witzig chose the artist’s way. Now 80, he can reflect on a life filled with wonder and creative accomplishments.
By the time he became a co-founder of Tracks in 1970, John was already a visionary journalist, photographer and designer, capturing the spirit of a nascent, Australian surf culture. While David Elfick and Albe Falzon were there with him in the beginning, Witzig takes credit for the name Tracks, and its tagline: ‘Tracks — continuous line, series of marks, left by person, animal or thing in passing along’. The dictionary-ripped description of ‘Tracks’ reads like a quirky pointer to the nomadic tendencies of the surfers John ran with; an eclectic bunch of pioneers, innovators and eccentrics for whom there was still much to be revealed around the next headland.
As a consequence of his connections to surfing’s vanguard, John has arguably the best-documented archive of the shortboard revolution in Australia from the mid-1960s and 70s. His photographic series ‘Arcadia’ has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and is a timeless window into a period of Australian surf culture often dubbed a ‘Golden Age’. His pictures from this era were mostly of his friends, who also happened to be revolutionary surfers, such as Wayne Lynch, Bob McTavish, George Greenough and Nat Young.
This cast of trailblazers explored and discovered some of the best waves in Australia. Many found their own version of Arcadia and never came home. John also succumbed to his own sense of wanderlust, dragging his mother’s Beetle down innumerable dirt tracks to document new frontiers of the Australian coastline. Ultimately, John’s images embody a heady period of surf culture as it found its way into the towns and lives of people who fell under its spell. It’s a testament to the quality of his work and his eye for the moment that his photos still resonate half a century later.
Beyond his passion for photography and writing, John’s renaissance inclinations made room for another muse – architecture. After studying at university he was inspired to build several homes of his own, finally settling in northern New South Wales on a rustic homestead in the coastal scrub between Maclean and Brooms Head.
John spoke to Tracks about his life and a period when surfers, filmmakers and photographers roamed Australia’s vast coastal fringes, and creativity and self-expression reigned supreme.
Can you elaborate on your love for photography and surfing and why you were attracted to point your lens towards the surf and capture images?
I was something of a photograph-obsessive from, at least, my early teenage years. That was predominantly black and white documentary photography, and Cartier-Bresson was my first photographic hero.
As for taking photographs, I came to that through surfing… not the other way around. I observed surf photographers like John Pennings on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and when I got my drivers licence in 1961, I began to move around the Palm Beach to Fairy Bower area and met Ron Perrott who was probably the preeminent surf photographer in Sydney at that time.
I watched what Ron was doing, and thought ‘I can do that’. I was fortunate that he was generous with advice and introduced me to the mysteries and joys of the darkroom.
So my first camera and lens were specifically aimed at shooting surfing.
What sort of equipment were you using?
The cheapest that was available… a Praktica body with a Tamron 400 mm lens.
Looking back, how did the experience of co-founding Tracks in 1970 and creating the magazine impact you over that period you were involved in it?
That was an exciting time. The concept for a tabloid newspaper/magazine was mine, ‘borrowed’ from what ‘Rolling Stone’ was doing in the US. And since they could run political stuff in a music magazine, I figured that we could do the same here in a surfing one.
The name Tracks was also mine… and discussed with Albe Falzon who was working for Bob Evans at Surfing World. Albe mentioned the name to Bob Evans who then pinched it for a short-lived film.
I needed a job, and Albe wanted a magazine to promote a film he was making. We roped in David Elfick who had broader publishing experience than we did, and we got the first issue out in October 1970.
If we’d known how few copies the first issue sold, we may have given up, but we didn’t, we found professional distribution through Consolidated Press, and success was pretty quick after that.
What kind of publication was Tracks back then?
It had predominantly surfing content, but also political and ecological concerns… something that was entirely absent from the other Australian magazines at the time.
It was self-indulgent, and aimed at people-like-us… which I’d guess isn’t generally regarded as a recipe for success in publishing.
But we were irreverent and rude and that endeared us to a young audience.
The spirit of that period seemed to also bring forth these characters with extraordinary talent and eccentricity. What was it like to be around people like Wayne Lynch, Nat Young, Bob McTavish, etc.?
Those were my friends, Nat from 1961, Bob from maybe 1964 (I’m not sure), and Wayne I first met in 1966 at Lorne. It was quite apparent that each of them did show extraordinary talent, but where that would lead was quite beyond our imaginations.
Did you feel at some point that, basically, every track you went down exploring, you either found gold or did around the next bend?
There were a lot of dirt tracks between say, Sydney and the Queensland border. I took my mother’s Beetle down so many of them, and few would provide gold, but it was an adventure, it was great fun, and we were the naïve ‘explorers’ of the Australian coast.
Nostalgia goes hand in hand with surf culture but you were really part of the ‘Golden Age’ of surfing. Was it really better back then?
It depends on what you judge it by. I liked it a lot… the surf trips, my part in the magazines, and in documenting what would, by the mid-1960s, be the precursor to the shortboard revolution… even if that term was unknown then.
Did you realise at the time that this was going to be as good as it gets and that eventually, word would get out, surfing would go mainstream, and the masses would descend on this lifestyle you and your friends were immersed in?
I wasn’t totally ‘immersed’ in surfing, although maybe most of my friends were. I had other interests and was (very slowly) working my way through a couple of degrees at university.
As I saw it, the 1960s and 70s were the great decades before commercialism and professionalism mostly swept them away.
The late 1970s were also when I finally had to get a job that paid, so the changes didn’t have quite the same effect on me as it did on others.
You’ve built a lot of houses in your time. Was that something you were passionate about or simply a means to an end? And, is there a particular one that stands out above the pack that you are most proud of?
I’d studied architecture, so my first house at Angourie was part of what was loosely called ‘professional practice’… and, with good help, I did actually build that. I never quite finished it which tells you something about houses.
My current place… the one after what I thought was the ‘last’ house… is the best I reckon. A lot of those costly lessons finally paid off and it came together pretty well.
Looking back at your images and the body of work you’ve produced, what are you most proud of?
The pictures of the life I saw around me during the 60s and 70s. Those seem to be seen as a social document now, and they’re the photographs that still hold my interest. It was my life that I was documenting as much as it was my friends’.
You’ve said you find the ocean a fascinating subject; why is that?
It’s mesmerising, and the variety is unending. It’s the perfect subject.
What do you make of surf culture these days?
I don’t pay any real attention to competition surfing, and in some ways… like aerials on closeouts that gather audience applause… it may have stranded surfing on an evolutionary branch that doesn’t go anywhere.
It does please me that commercial surfing still finds a place for the non-competitors. Our world would be a far less rich place if that wasn’t the case.
Do you have any plans to continue to exhibit or bring out a further body of work?
Ahh… there is no ‘further body of work’. Virtually all the pictures with real merit have been shown, many a number of times.
I’m having a final-final-final exhibition at the Dickerson Gallery in Sydney’s Woollahra in October 2024. It’ll include the top 10 or maybe 12 of the images that have sold best/are still maintaining their interest/or that I just really like.
