Imogen Caldwell Welcomes You To Stab’s 2016 Big Book

Summer has undressed and we’re here for it. It is a season of excess! More hours in the day, more skin on the sand, at least one more negroni. It’s hard not to turn into an extra version of yourself (which you should absolutely lean into). This year’s big book is a summer version of Stab, and it is certainly excessive. This edition, we dream in the desert and float up in the clouds.

Imogen Caldwell is the brightest jewel in the reddest dirt. Her character moulded by Western Australia’s The Bluff, Imogen blends nordic features with honest demeanour, whip-crack humour and a distinct lack of frost. She also tows into some of the most shallow, frightening lefthand barrels that Australia’s western coastline has to offer, with ski wrangled by her charismatic pro surf boyfriend, Cortney Brown. While it sounds like the IMDB description of a film you’d like to watch on a long haul flight, this is just everyday life for Imogen.

According to our photographer, Rich Freeman, Imogen rode in wearing a leather jacket and black matte helmet, which she removed to throw out a blonde mane that reached her waist. As Rich says, it was “like a Japanese manga cartoon.”

Photography

Richard Freeman

Speaking of long haul flights, is there any greater paradox in the average, privileged, modern life than the airport experience? So much potential stress pre-rolling the deepest elevation! But, it needn’t be such. Because we live to give, Stab curated a menu of cheat codes to enhance the transition from designated drop-off zone to destination. How To Breeze The Airport is a feature that will up the brightness of international air travel.

At a very young age John Florence held the promise of a god. But in his teens, it was feared that he’d become another Jamie O’Brien: extraordinary at Pipeline, not so much elsewhere. Between 12 and 16, John John was nowhere to be found. Where was he? Doing what he has always done! And that included African stints, where he became great friends with the surfer Frank Solomon. It is therefore John’s narration that greatly enhances the film Let’s Be Frank, which profiles Mr Solomon and sits perfectly between a surf film and a film with surfing in it.

The “Queen of Makaha” was the best female stylist for the 70’s and 80’s. No one embodied the spirit of Aloha like Rell Sunn. This era-defining moment by Jeff Divine, 1979.

Photography

Jeff Divine

In this wonderful (if somewhat futile in the Tron age) labour of love, we also submit 12 reasons why women look better on waves than men – an indisputable fact! At its simplest, a divine photo essay, and at its most complex, a voyage into an alternate reality in which surfing is a female-driven art form.

You like? Then breeze over here to acquaint yourself with Stab’s 2016 Big Book.