Renowned Surf Photographer Hank Foto Dies at 62

Surf photographer Hank Foto has died at 62. A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to support his 15-year-old son, Fender, who Foto was the sole provider for | Image via Hank Foto/ GoFundMe

Legendary surf photographer Hank Foto, one of the most recognizable lensman to work for Surfing Magazine, has died.

Hank passed away on Saturday at the age of 62 on Saturday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He leaves behind his 15-year-old son Fender, for whom he was sole provider, following the death of his wife in 2018. A GoFundMe has been set up to help Fender and Hank’s family during this time.

Hank’s work helped document the evolution of big-wave surfing in Hawaii, capturing some of the sport’s most iconic locations, including Pipeline, Waimea and the Outer Reefs.

According to an obituary published by Surfer, Foto was born Brian Stephen in Newport Beach, California, in 1964. He grew up taking photos and surfing in Southern California as a teen, particularly at Salt Creek, which became an important center of high-performance surfing. As he explained to fellow photographer Brian Bielmann in an interview with FreeSurf Magazine, he earned the nickname “Snack Bar Hank” while working at the snack bar at Salt Creek in Orange County when he was 13. By the early 1980s, he had moved into surf photography, and “Snack Bar Hank” eventually became the “Hank Foto” known throughout the surfing world.

Hank made his first surf photography trip to Bali in 1983. The following year, he came under the guidance of Larry “Flame” Moore, then the photo editor of Surfing Magazine and one of the most influential figures in surf photography. Hank’s first published photograph appeared in Surfing in 1984 and he moved to Hawaii full-time in 1990 to work as a staff photographer for the magazine.

“I met Larry [“Flame”] Moore down at the beach, and he was a big mentor of mine,” Hank told Bielmann. “He was the one who got me to get my first water housing and taught me everything I knew about photography. I was friends with him until he passed away. He was a great friend of mine.”

According to an obituary published by surfing news outlet Stab, Hank became one of the magazine’s most recognizable photographers. He became particularly well known for photographing surfers in some of the most challenging waves in the world. Among his most notable images was a 1994 Surfing Magazine cover photograph of Erik Barton at Teahupo’o in Tahiti. The image showed Barton inside a huge blue barrel and became one of the most famous photographs of the wave.

Hank’s career also included photographing Kelly Slater, widely regarded as the greatest professional surfer of all time. Slater paid tribute to Foto in an Instagram post following his death.

“We lost a good one in Hank Foto yesterday after a battle with cancer,” Slater writes.

“Hank and I laughed about that one so many times over the years,” Slater adds. “Everyone who knew him has amazing stories and although he never did a book (he did shoot the cover of my first book Pipe Dreams in 2003), apparently he was keen to have a book with stories from all his friends that involve their memories with him. I hope everyone can gather stories and make this a reality and maybe we can create something really great for his son Fender, and all have a big send off for a legend in our world.”