FRANK 151, Volcom and 7th Day Brewery brought surf, skate and snow together for a night celebrating three Australian photographers who helped define how board culture looked.
Last week, Brookvale’s industrial heartland briefly became the centre of the Australian board-sports universe.
Hosted by FRANK 151 and presented alongside Volcom, the Triple A Photo Expo brought three Andrews, three disciplines and several decades of photographic history under one roof. Andrew Christie represented the ocean, Andrew Fawcett brought the mountains, and Andrew Mapstone delivered the streets. Big archival images covered the walls while cold beers, live music and the usual Northern Beaches wildlife filled the space between them.
FRANK 151 content editor Will Stolk curated the live show and sat down with Christie and Fawcett to pull stories from behind the photographs: the trips, the near misses, the changing industry and the years spent carrying expensive equipment into places where expensive equipment generally should not go.
Mapstone could not be there in the flesh, but he still joined the party through a tell-all YouTube video. His stories arrived on the big screen, while his photographs did the rest of the talking.
ANDREW CHRISTIE: OCEAN TIME
Andrew Christie had spent more than two decades documenting surfing at its highest level, but his archive was never just a collection of blokes doing turns.
Christie began shooting while still at school, landed work in Tracks, and took his first commissioned trip to West Africa for Surfing World when he was only 18. He later worked as a senior photographer for Waves and spent more than a decade shooting photography and video for Volcom across Australia, Europe, the United States and some seriously remote corners of the planet.
His photographs carried the full equation: surfer, wave, weather, landscape and the strange moments of luck required to make all of them cooperate. Anyone can point a camera at the ocean. Christie’s gift was knowing when the ocean was about to give something back.
ANDREW FAWCETT: MOUNTAIN LINES AND STREET ROOTS
Andrew Fawcett carried the snow end of the exhibition, although his photographic roots crossed freely between skateboarding and snowboarding.
He grew up as a skate-obsessed kid studying magazine photography, experimenting in the school darkroom and eventually photographing the snowboarders and skateboarders around him. That background showed in the work. Even when the terrain was covered in snow, the timing, framing and attitude still had one foot planted firmly in skate culture.
Fawcett’s archive brought altitude into the building: frozen take-offs, disappearing light, mountain weather and riders committed to lines that looked questionable even from the safety of a brewery. His contribution completed the crossover properly. This was not surf photography in one corner, skate photography in another and snow photography awkwardly placed near the toilets. The three worlds actually spoke to each other.
ANDREW MAPSTONE: THE STREET HISTORIAN
Then there was Andrew Mapstone — Australian skateboarding’s photographic record keeper and one of the most prolific lensmen the local scene had produced.
Mapstone spent more than two decades supporting skateboarders and documenting a culture that does not tend to wait around for perfect lighting, permits or polite introductions. He became SLAM’s longest-serving senior photographer and was inducted into the magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2019 for his influence, loyalty and enormous body of work.
His images preserved tricks, spots, personalities and entire eras that otherwise might have survived only as increasingly unreliable stories told outside skate shops. Even appearing by video, Mapstone remained a major presence in the room. That is what happens when half the crowd has grown up seeing the world through your photographs.
FRANK 151 CULTURE FROM INSIDE THE ROOM
Triple A made sense as a FRANK 151 event because FRANK had always operated best where scenes overlapped.
Born from independent print culture in Atlanta in 1999, FRANK 151 built its name through the pocket-sized FRANK Book, pairing guest curators with original, unvarnished stories spanning music, art, street culture and action sports. It was never meant to observe culture through binoculars. The point was to hand the microphone to the people actually making it.
That same approach drove Triple A. Rather than treating the three photographers like names in a museum catalogue, the night put them in front of their community and let them explain what really happened beyond the edge of the frame.
THE BROOKIE WILDLIFE
7th Day Brewery was almost suspiciously perfect for it.
The converted Brookvale warehouse already had surf-and-skate culture baked into the walls, along with an independent brewery, a large beer garden and the kind of relaxed community atmosphere where dogs, skateboards and questionable stories were all welcome.
The local wildlife came out in full plumage: pro surfers, pro snowboarders, a few skaters, photographers, old heads, groms and assorted Northern Beaches characters. A couple of reality-TV faces popped in too. What did they know about board sports? Hard to say. They did, however, successfully locate the bar.
Volcom gave away free gear, ensuring grown adults briefly rediscovered the competitive instincts of children at a birthday party.
The bands handled the rest. The Cat Snatchers opened proceedings, Krisp took the headline slot and The Bleeding Lizzards closed the night loudly. All three were good enough to stop people pretending they had only come for serious photographic discussion.
Triple A was not nostalgia sealed behind glass. It was a reminder that Christie, Fawcett and Mapstone helped create the visual memory of Australian board sports. Before reels, drones, algorithms and daily content quotas, these three were already out there — swimming with cameras, freezing on mountains and getting moved along from skate spots.
FRANK151 gave the OG photographer boss men from Down Under their flowers while the room was there to applaud them.
