Paradise Is A Curated Library

From the pages of Issue 89.

If you’ve ever attended a school in your life, you’ll know what a syllabus is. For all you who didn’t, or breezed through your academic career and don’t remember much: It’s an authoritative list of reading material you’re supposed to burn through each night for the whole year, footnotes and all. Initially, when you’re given it, you become galvanised on new opportunities to learn. But this jazziness will fizzle out by lunchtime.

Stab recently stumbled upon a page-turner by highly-skilled and charming photographer, John Respondek, and liked it so much we deemed it worthy of our own syllabus. Covering the international musicians of Dion Agius, a perennial Stab fav, it’s a divine photo journal sprinkled with short essays and candid interviews. Perfect if you’re one of those types who like reading books for the pictures.

“During my charmed existence as a surf photographer, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a bunch of professional surfers,” says John. “I’ve become great friends with a few, like Dion Agius. And although we’ve experienced a bunch of published success, much of our imagery has remained hidden away in a pile of hard drives on my office desk. This doesn’t sit well with me, so I decided to bring a selection of these images to life in a serious of independent photo essays. Dion. By Respondek is part one of an ongoing print passion project.”

“John did such an amazing job with this,” adds Dion. “It’s such a cool memory for me to have all these trips I’ve done with him and then be able to catalogue it into something physical. It’s a perfect way to tell people a couple of stories from the road while showcasing a bunch of photos that never make it to being published. I think he always gets distressed putting shit up online where it disappears amongst the masses. So it’s great to see him have an outlet through this — not to mention he did such a great job with it.

Dion. By Respondek is available exclusively on John’s website, respondekphoto.com. Collect whilst hot.