AN ODE TO MARVELLOUS MARTY

As a surf photographer Marty Tullemans was a prolific dynamo, a restless barrel of human energy. The kind of guy who could swim against a raging Burleigh current to get a sublime water shot of a 70s luminary like Peterson or Bartholomew in full cry, and then hustle his way through the throng of contest spectators to make sure he was on-hand to nail the podium shot.

Given his irrepressible energy, his talent, and his love for his job, he played a huge part in defining surf culture as we know it. Anyone who read surf magazines in the 70s 80s and 90s stared rapturously at photos with a Tullemans credit and his work was frequently revisited in later decades.

As a human Marty was zany, engaging and famously eccentric; he could go high and he could go low, but even when he was on one of his most esoteric tangents he could hit you with a thunderbolt line that seemed to perfectly capture the essence of some person or subject matter.

News of his passing was met with great sadness in the surfing world. To pay tribute to one of surfing’s most endearing and colourful characters, we reached out to two Tracks editors who knew him well – Phil Jarratt and Tim Baker.

Enjoy the honest reflections and spend a little time pouring over the eclectic mix of images from a master of his craft. - Luke kennedy

I’m pretty sure Dick Hoole introduced me to Marty Tullemans back in 1975, around the time that Dick and Jack McCoy’s Propeller partnership was providing Tracks with the biggest part of our Gold Coast coverage.

But Propeller was jumping ship to create their own version of Tracks with Rip Curl funding. Although we weren’t too crazy about the looming advent of Backdoor Magazine, mainly because it might mean the loss of the Curl’s advertising revenue, there was no