Watch: A Glimpse Into One Of Today’s Most Captivating Freesurfers

At the end of a public lecture, photographer Wolfgang Tillmans was asked by an art student how one might make work that resonates with a large number of people.

Tillmans did not offer a pep talk on going viral. Instead, he argued that pleasing the masses was a dangerous approach, likely to dilute and ultimately betray the work. He said it can be more important that twenty people are true fans, and that sometimes all it takes is a chance meeting with one or two individuals to put you on the right path.

Proving Tillmans’ thesis, Victor Bernardo posted stories from a day surfing around Ventura before a DM introduced the possibility of riding for Album as a freesurfer.

Before he joined their program, I had no idea who Victor was, and I suspect most of the recreational surf world would have said the same. Watching him rise from qualifying tour obscurity to become one of today’s most inspirational surfers is both surprising and heartwarming.

Victor’s surfing is a corrective to the often nauseating, forced soul-arching that can happen on boards missing at least one fin. Regardless of his sled of choice, there’s a sense of honesty and joy in his very high-performance surfing.

Episode 2 of Infinite Difference plays like both a mini-documentary and an ode to VB: a visual celebration of the happy-go-lucky surfer from Guarujá, now residing in Southern California, with commentary and praise from Album’s own Matt Parker.

Suspicious? A little. But we can’t argue with a word of it.