San Diego surfers in wild-eyed panic after first ever locally acquired case of dengue fever surfaces!

“So powerful have the Witzig photographs become in
surfing mythology, they have created false memories.”

The Australian surf photographer John Witzig, founder of
Tracks magazine and responsible for some of the surfing lifestyle’s
most enduring images, has made the bombshell claim that surf
photos have the ability to implant false memories in people who
weren’t there. 

If you’ve been around surf a while you’ll know Witzig’s most
famous shots.

There’s a shirtless Bob McTavish standing in front of an FX
Holden in 1966 examining an empty Noosa lineup (Witzig says he was
pressured, even then, not to take the photo, “There were various
people who didn’t want photographs taken of Noosa,”); Country Soul,
new parents with their baby in a groovy kitchen picked high with
homegrown vegetables, a photo that came to symbolise the surfer
counter culture movement and its back-to-mother-earth ethos; a
water shot Mark Richards getting rad at Haleiwa in 1976.

So good they fry your mind? Well, yeah, sorta.

Johnny Witzig, eighty now, made the claim his photos could
implant memories in an interview with a Sydney daily’s sports
writer on the back of his latest exhibition, which displays twenty
four of his most iconic images. 

So powerful have the Witzig
photographs become in surfing mythology, they have created false
memories. “There’s a lot of people who have told me they were
there, or they could remember it, when they were not,” he
says.

Ain’t as crazy as it sounds.

Studies have demonstrated that it’s possible to implant false
memories through various methods, including showing people doctored
or AI-edited photos. For instance, research has shown that
participants could be led to believe they experienced events that
were actually not real, like being lost in a mall or participating
in events like a hot air balloon ride, through suggestive
techniques which often involve visual cues like photographs.

Here’s a wild study about
it. 

As for real life, surf, you and me, you ever believed you were
somewhere you weren’t and how did you find out?

I defs saw the Tom Carroll snap at Pipe; Kelly and Rob
high-five, several world champs pouring so much heat up their beaks
I thought their precious hearts would explode.

Some other stuff not so sure in hindsight.

Click here if you’re in Sydney and
you want to check out Johnny’s mind-altering shots in real
life.