What makes a book lively and full of energy? In the case of I Just Wanna Surf – a mix of photo book, zine and diary – it’s hard to say exactly: but in any event, energy, friendship and pleasure leap off of the pages. Perhaps it’s the authentic photos, which record a special community: women and non-binary surfers of colour, demanding a place within a sports culture traditionally seen as dominated by white males. Or the soft, vintage glow in which the images are bathed, giving us the feeling that we too are bobbing on the waves on a sunny day. Or maybe it’s the dynamic editing, with some photos filling an entire spread, sometimes overlapping, as if spread out on a kitchen table so everyone can look. The same energy also crackles in the French-folded dust jacket, on which a wide-ranging selection of photos from the book give a great taster of the atmosphere inside. The photos in the interior are interspersed with turquoise and pale red pages containing excerpts from the photographer’s diary. These deal with depression and growing up in one of the few families of colour in a Californian resort and form a subtle, more serious counterpart to the cheerful surfing photos. An exceptional, relevant book that gives an intimate impression of a community. One caveat: in the books submitted, the end paper was somewhat stuck to the front page. As this was the case in both copies, this looks to be more than a one-off production error, but the jury was unable to ascertain exactly where the problem arose.