Surf World Mourns Legendary, Beloved Photographer: Hank Foto

You can donate to Hank’s family Gofundme here.

This week the surf world discovered that veteran photographer Hank Foto handed away. 

Brian Stephen—higher recognized to the browsing world as Hank Foto—was a fixture of the North Shore, a hard-living, sharp-tongued, regularly hilarious presence who someway managed to place himself in the best place at any time when circumstances bought critical.

His images, particularly of Hawaii’s Outer Reefs in addition to its premiere spots like Pipe and Waimea, are a part of the visible report of contemporary massive wave browsing.

Hank died this week after a battle with pancreatic most cancers. He was 62. 

“I just got the news,” wrote Brian Bielmann, Hank’s longtime good friend and fellow North Shore photographer and transplant. “Hank has passed away. He’s on the ultimate surf adventure. It was just his time but the world is gonna be a very different place for many of us without Hank. I sent him a text this morning. I said ‘Hank I’m checking up on you’ cause I haven’t been to see him in the hospital for four or five days and he wrote me back and he said, ‘I’m Out’. I thought they were letting him out of the hospital again and I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘where are you?’ and I got no response. Two hours later I heard the news. I realized Hank was calling to tell me he was ready to go. I just didn’t realize what he was saying.”  

Born in Newport Beach in 1964, Hank grew up browsing round Southern California, significantly Salt Creek, because the wave grew to become the middle of the excessive efficiency browsing world.  

“I got the name Hank from a couple of boys at Salt Creek,” Hank instructed Bielmann in an interview with FreeSurf Magazine.

“I grew up, born and raised in California. Kevin Billy actually nicknamed me “Snack Bar Hank” as a result of at 13 years previous, I began working on the snack bar in Salt Creek and it sort of caught with me.”

Hank began taking pictures photographs within the early 80s, and located himself being taken beneath wing by one among surf images’s most vital figures. 

“I met Larry [“Flame”] Moore (former photograph editor of Surfing Magazine) down on the seaside, and he was a giant mentor of mine,” Hank instructed 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.” 

Hank’s first printed {photograph} appeared in Surfing in 1984. Within just a few years, Hank was full-time as a workers photographer and ultimately one of many journal’s most recognizable shooters. His work through the  early-90s targeted on a few of browsing’s most underground outliers—Shawn Briley, Nathan Fletcher, Christian Fletcher, Josh and Randy Sleigh, the early Pipeline Posse, and made for a number of the decade’s most impactful photos, not least of which his 1994 Surfing cowl reveal of what has turn into one among browsing’s most immediately recognizable waves: Erik Barton standing in one of many largest, bluest barrels the surf world had ever seen: Teahupo’o

“Being a photo editor for “Surfing Magazine” was all the time my dream,” Hank instructed skate and surf icon Jay Adams in a Juice Magazine interview in 2004. “Growing up in Salt Creek, I was always taking pictures and it was pretty interesting…I just wanted to be in the ocean all the time. I wanted a job that wasn’t like a job, so I became a photographer. I got a job working for Surfing Magazine as the little gopher girl. I learned the ropes of photography and by the time I was 26, I was a full-fledged photographer… Surfing was always there for me. I just had to work my way up the ladder. Now I’m a senior staff photographer and I’m one of the top three or four guys.”

For the final thirty years, Hank’s images has been largely targeted on the North Shore and the significantly chaotic mixture of heavy water, borderline loopy characters, distant, feral journeys and the unhinged, candid moments earlier than and after the plain motion.

Hank revealed to shut buddies late final 12 months that he’d been recognized with terminal pancreatic most cancers. For the previous few months he’d been out and in of remedy, with shut family and friends rallying round him and his household. News unfold final week that Hank had been admitted into the hospital and that the prognosis was not trying good. 

“He was hurting,” wrote Bielmann. “ His body was beat to hell. I say a prayer for his son Fender and I’m sorry for his loss. There are so many Hank stories out there. We should write a book and just everybody tell their Hank stories. Hank, you were an asshole, but you were our asshole. Love you long time, Hank. We will see you on the other side.”

“We lost a good one in @hankfoto808 yesterday after a battle with cancer,” wrote Kelly Slater. “I met Hank with @patchy_o and the crew at Salt Creek when I was a little kid. He was a kneeboarder then and he worked at the snack bar at the beach so we all called him ‘Snack-bar Hank’. The guys at Creek had a club called SCC (Salt Creek Core) and he was an ever-present figure in the group. I had just turned pro but hadn’t yet signed a contract yet and I had no logos so I only repped SCC stickers for a couple of weeks. One night they threw an SCC house party. Everyone was drinking and partying along and then everyone started diving in the pool from the deep end one after another for about 15-20 mins. Then Hank decides to jump in from the side 90 degrees to everyone else right as I ran and dove headfirst. We connect mid air with my forehead on his temple. I was kinda ko’d for a second and thought I hurt my neck pretty badly underwater so I come up waving for help. I check on whoever it was I hit and it’s Hank blowing bubbles unconscious at the bottom of the pool. The music is loud and nobody is paying attention so I swim down and grab him and get his head above water when everyone starts helping. He’s coughing up water and super concussed but he’s alive. We call the ambulance and by the time they get there Hank is drinking beers again and refuses help before walking face first into a sliding glass door. So we tried again and again to get him to go get checked out but he flat out refuses and continues on with the night. Hank and I laughed about that one so many times over the years. 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. Peace Brian ‘Hank’ Stephan. It won’t be the same community without you.”

Hank leaves behind his 15-year-old son, Fender. Hank had been unable to work whereas present process remedy. His spouse had died in 2018, leaving him as Fender’s main guardian.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help Fender and Hank’s family in this heartbreaking time.