Tom Dugan
Tom Dugan shoots better than you. High-action surf porn. Low-cut bikini poses. Laid-back lifestyles. His photos drop jaws and raise eyebrows — and all are born from a natural gift for knowing where to look and when to pull the trigger. “Dugan’s one of the best of our generation,” says fellow photographer and longtime business partner, Dick Meseroll. “But photography has always come easy to Tom, just like his surfing.”
Dugan first hit the water near his Long Island, NY home in 1965 at the age of 12. Within a few years, he was taking Eastern Surfing Association (ESA) titles in the New York District. In 1974, his passion for surfing drew him to Florida’s warmer waters and hotter surf scene, where he continued competing, winning the Smyrna Safari Pro a few years later. When he picked up a camera in 1980, all his time in the ocean immediately translated onto film — and into cash.
“I’d bought a camera off a buddy for $50,” he recalls. “I took it to Hatteras and shot some photos of Bob Rohmann. I sold one off the first roll to Sundek for $250.” From there, Dugan’s focus quickly shifted from catching waves to capturing them. He used Florida’s ultimate surf photo studio, Sebastian Inlet, to document the East Coast’s deepest talent pool: guys like Jeff Crawford, Matt Kechele, Pat Mulhern and Bill Hartley.
One day in 1982, Kech suggested Dugan train his lens on a little grom riding Second Peak. “He said, ‘You should take a couple shots of that kid. He might be good someday.’” When US Surf ran a slide-sized image later that year, it became the first published shot of future 11-time world champ, Kelly Slater.
Dugan continued to spotlight the rising Atlantic tide through the 80s, both as a staff shooter for East Coast Surfer and as photo editor for Swell magazine. But it was his own regional rag — Eastern Surf Magazine — that cemented Dugan’s role revealing future surf stars. When Dugan teamed up with Meseroll and Lally Collins in 1991 to form the magazine, it was just in time to document the greatest generation of Right Coast rippers.
His beloved Central Florida sandbars inspired his most legendary images, including back-to-back covers for Surfer magazine’s coveted Photo Annual and a 1996 image of a future four-time world champ tagged “Lisa Andersen Surfs Better Than You.” Then there was Kelly Slater’s “Tomahawk Chop,” a patented snap that ended up on Australia’s Surfing Life’s list of the “Top 50 Surf Shots of All-Time” and now lives forever as the model for Cocoa Beach’s commemorative statue to their favorite surfing son, Kelly Slater.
So, when it comes to documenting our sport’s greatest legend — and the most photographed surfer of all time — Tom Dugan can claim having taken two of the most important images: the very first and the one that will last for generations. “Which doesn’t surprise me at all,” says Meseroll. “Some photogs have it, some don’t. Dugan had it from the first photo he took.”
Photos by Tom Dugan, Matt Kechele, Mickey McCarthy, Richard “Mez” Meseroll, Mimi Munro, Jason Obenauer and Larry Pope
