About

Our mission is to share an iconic and historic place in time where life was a relaxing summer day at the beach with family and friends. Time has only burnished these images of a bygone day when the idea that you could build a lifestyle around surfing was just in its glorious birth.

Vintage Surf Art is an iconic surf culture and beach lifestyle brand. We are the sole copyright owners to all the Vintage Surf Art images. Our collection consists of over thousands of still photos and many hours of stock footage from the 1950′s – 1960’s shot by famous surf photographer and filmmaker, Grant Rohloff. Subjects to all images and films consist of surf culture, beach lifestyle, iconic surfers (Greg Noll, Miki Dora, etc.), skateboarding, motorcycling and the environment.

Our company has sold high volumes of framed and signed limited edition photos to home staging companies, hotels, restaurants, interior designers, celebrities and art collectors around the world. In addition, we’ve partnered with various apparel companies and Getty Images for the use of Grant Rohloff images and stock footage. Stock movie footage is licensed for feature films, documentaries and commercials. Still photos are used for books, magazines, signed limited pieces for sale, apparel and various other consumer products.

Chris Rohloff, President

Born and raised in Santa Monica, California, Chris graduated from Santa Monica High School in the mid 1980s along with some other well-known faces in Hollywood. He is an avid surfer who learned to surf by age twelve during a trip to Puerto Vallarta. If you don't catch him surfing the waves of the California coast then you might catch him riding one in Indonesia, Australia, or Hawaii.

Like his father, Chris has a penchant for photography and the movie industry working on sets and a member of various unions for ten years. Now an entrepreneur, Chris strives to live out the lessons he learned from his father which were -- be creative, do something that no one else has done, keep a sense of humor, and don't take yourself or life too seriously. Chris has photographed many spots through his travels over the years and is now making his photos available to the public.

"As far back as I can remember my dad put the letter ‘R’ in recycle. During the 1970’s when hardly anyone was recycling, we would throw all our bottles and cans in separate trashcans and once a month we would trek to the recycling center in Santa Monica, something I hated doing but later realized why we did it. My dad showed by his actions how to make the planet a better place. He was way ahead of his time towards being ‘green’." -- Chris Rohloff

Grant Rohloff (1935-1989), Surf Photographer & Filmmaker

Grant Rohloff was born in Hollywood, California in 1935 and started surfing in the early 1950s. Grant's love of surfing and fascination with watching other surfers led him first to a brief apprenticeship with John Severson (Surfer Magazine founder/and surf filmmaker) and eventually to his own career as a still photographer and surf filmmaker.

Grant's first project, titled appropriately "The Wonderful World Of Surfing" was released in 1960 and was followed by 12 other surf movies including the highly acclaimed "Men Who Ride Mountains". "Grant was ahead of his time and way ahead of the pack back in the 1960s," notes, C.R.Stecyk ||| (photographer, writer). The posters Grant used for promoting these movies were commonly the photos he had taken during actual filming sessions.

His films managed to capture not only the serious and great business of surfing, but also the humorous, real-life "off times" of the surfers. Rohloff always began his movies with a comic scene (in keeping to his mission for his work) -- to inform and entertain. To him, filmmaking and surfing were so much more than a vocation; they were a way of life.