Hi Everyone—
Fifteen years. Wow. Even typing that feels surreal. When I look back to 2010, in sincerity, I could never have seen where life would take me. Around the world, and back again (and again), it has been quite a ride. I have been so privileged to have experienced so much and seen so many things, and I am eternally grateful to everyone who helped me along the way, and all of you that have been a part of my journey.
To celebrate 15 years, my team and I have worked hard to tell my story to all of you, with some unique surprises along the way over the next 15 days. I hope you will stay tuned- and you may see some things you have never seen from me before!
To kick it all off, I wanted to share a timeline of those 15 years, since so many people may first have heard of me well after 2010. But before diving into my start in 2010- a little bit of background is helpful!
The early years (before 2010)
I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and I was fortunate enough to attend the Episcoal School of Dallas, which had a High School course available in photography, including learning about composition, technique, and even development in the darkroom. Under the tutelage of my photography teacher and mentor, Janis Hefley, I fell deeply in love with the artform. I began to become so invested in photography that I entered (and won) several contests in Texas. By the time I was ready to figure out where I was going to head off to for college, however, I thought I should get a more broad-based education, but still continue to develop my skillset in photography. I chose to go to Emerson College in Boston, with a major in Marketing and a minor in Photography. I’m lucky to have a background in both fields!
After several years of university in Boston, where I met my future husband Jeff, I finished college with an internship program that Emerson had established in Los Angeles with a position under the head of Marketing at Paramount Pictures in 2007. When my internship was about to end, fate led me to a full time job working for the President of the studio- so I stayed in Los Angeles and began a “real” career in entertainment. I was surrounded by people deeply passionate about film. However as much as I loved films, they were not my passion. After a year on the job, in 2008 (deep in the recession), I decided I needed to take a leap of faith and follow my passion- photography. I left Paramount, and dedicated myself full time to photography, taking advanced classes at Julia Dean Photography in Los Angeles under the guidance of another mentor, Aline Smithson. I didn’t know if I’d be successful, but I knew I had to try and follow my heart and gave myself a year to see what would happen.
At Julia Dean, we were given assignments to create fine art. A moment that truly set my compass came from an assignment: create a humorous art series. I had to think of the subject matter and was totally befuddled. Right after we were sent the task, I joined my family on a trip to West Texas where we had gone as a family on many trips before to the artistic enclave town of Marfa.
Myself, my sister, and my parents toured the Chinati foundation installations around town but also made our way just outside of town to a new installation called Prada Marfa. Seemingly a Prada store in the middle of nowhere, it was actually an art installation created by the artistic German duo Elmgreen & Dragset. We took some fun family photos and as we pulled away, my sister took out a banana from her bag, ate it, and threw the peel on the road next to the store. I thought - this is funny - and snapped a photo with my camera as well as a series of polaroids from different angles. This became a muse for my humor project, which I called “Apeeling Moments” that featured banana peels in ludicrous situations where you’d expect normal inanimate objects like clothes pins, or soap. But it was that photo of the Prada store and the banana peel that drew the most interest in my class. Their feedback was valuable, and I was about to get a lot more.
2010: Flea Market Beginnings
While still taking classes at Julia Dean, I visited the popular West Hollywood flea market named the Melrose Trading Post one weekend to shop for some furniture for my first apartment with Jeff, who just relocated from Boston to join me in LA. While visiting the flea market there were so many notable treasures and artisans, but there were no photographers. I inquired about the cost of a booth, which was $50 each Sunday, but had to show my portfolio and be approved by the Trading Post management team. Sure enough, they liked my work- both from Julia Dean projects, as well as photos I took in years prior in Dallas and during college from a semester abroad in Europe.
And so it began, in a 10’ x 10’ booth (really a pop-up tent purchased at Lowe’s with some mesh netting to hang photos on), each Sunday, I would meet people and explain my artwork. I wanted to hear what they wanted to hang in their homes; that’s where I wanted my art to go. I had a love of interior design- my mother worked in the magazine industry as an interior design editor and would take me on set with her to photoshoots while I would do homework and simultaneously absorb the design direction going on around me.My photography was meant to be inclusive- I wanted it to be joyful, and bring people together- and for them to look at these pieces in their homes and smile.
I sold $35 prints—matted, sleeved, and paired with a coupon for a discount frame. It was hilariously scrappy and completely thrilling. I took a black and white photo of the Prada Marfa store, which is still available on the site today.
I also sold a version of the photo of the store I took with 9 Polaroids, featuring the banana, and they both became instantly popular, and instant conversation starters. The Marfa Prada Polaroids print was never sold on my website, but in honor of the 15 year celebration, I am re-releasing it today for a limited time only, in a limited edition of 50 framed small prints.Grab one before they are gone!
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During 2009 and 2010, Jeff and I (and our puppy Stella) spent countless Sundays working at the flea market, meeting interesting customers. But it was one Sunday in 2010, when a woman came into my booth, surveyed my artwork and asked me the question: “Have you ever thought about selling online?” that would really change my life.
At the time, selling fine art online was unheard of. But she told me about several new home decor companies that were popping up online, running flash sale events (remember this was during the recession still), and there was one chic site in particular that I was drawn to called One Kings Lane. Their style and brands felt aligned with my love of interior decor. So I cold-emailed One Kings Lane, introduced myself as “Gray Malin, Photographer,” then showed up at an LA event they hosted (uninvited) and said, “Hi, I’m the guy who emailed you last week.” After a little cajoling with the founders- they took a meeting with me and then they took a chance. They let me have a small flash sale event on their site. Sixty prints sold overnight during that first event. For the first time, my work shipped far beyond Los Angeles.
2011: Onward and Upward
In 2011 I continued to have small events on One Kings Lane, and it was clear the Prada Marfa print was the most popular. I returned to Marfa and took a series of photos this time, that focused on the juxtaposition of this luxury icon against the backdrop of the middle of nowhere. This is where I shot my Dawn and Two Cowboys photos that, to this day, are still of some of my most popular images.
The One Kings Lane events in 2010 were a huge success, but I didn’t know where to go from there. What was next? In Spring of 2010 I took weekend trip with Jeff and some friends to Las Vegas. We stayed on a 30-something floor suite of the Palazzo, which had a view directly down onto the pool below. I snapped this near-aerial photo of the pool scene because I thought the composition was interesting and the subject matter joyful.
I didn’t do anything with that photo for months, except I made it my screen saver on my computer, and then one day a light bulb went off. I thought“If I like this pool photo so much- wouldn’t other people? Why don’t I get more pool photos?!”
By this time, it was December 2010, and there were few places you could go to get photos of pools at that time of year. It happened to be the same time as the Art Basel event in Miami. So off to Miami I went, expecting to kindly ask permission to hotels to photograph their iconic pools from their rooftops and be given appreciative access. Instead, I was pulled back down to Earth, and told “no- scram kid” at nearly every property. Defeated, I did not know what to do, and then I heard the sound of a helicopter whizzing by. “Well there’s the answer right there” I thought. Time to find a helicopter! They would take me over the pools of Miami. So I typed into Google “Helicopter, Miami”.
Stepping into my first helicopter, the pilot said he had taken many aerial photo flights before and he had to remove the doors. “Excuse me, what?” I was not expecting that! I took a deep breath and off we went. We climbed into the sky and as fate would have it- a freak downpour came over all of Miami. Not only were the pools deserted by the time we flew overhead, they looked like a wet mess. Defeated again, I sighed, and I saw some beach umbrellas in the distance. “Can we fly back along the beach?” I asked, mostly to have some calming views as I accepted my fate. So in those last few minutes, we skimmed the sky above South Beach and I began to photograph the landscape before me of umbrellas and chairs- line, repetition, form - the keys of design. I instantly recognized I had accidentally stumbled across a viewpoint and a concept that were not yet known in photography. There were no drones yet, and this was a vantage few had seen of the beach. And who doesn’t love the beach?
2012: High in the Sky
The moment the Miami Beach aerials went on sale on an event on One Kings Lane it was clear I was onto something. Events where dozens of prints sold became hundreds. These were photos that were essentially accidental. So I had purpose now to add to this body of work.
In 2012 I flew around the world: Rio, Sydney, Kauai, San Francisco, Cancun, Los Angeles, St. Tropez, the Hamptons, and Lisbon - just to name a few.It was exhausting and exciting all at the same time.
Every event on One Kings Lane did better than the last. I could barely keep up. On top of all the One Kings Lane madness that year, I joined a little app called Instagram to share my photography and life with my friends and followers.
2013: Landscapes and Llamas
As fast as I could get around the globe to take photos of beaches, I couldn’t keep up with the summer season everywhere. So my eye began to turn to other aerial vantages- what about parks and ski slopes? Were they not just as dreamy canvases for photography that would reveal themselves as works of art in their own right? So off I went to Aspen, Central Park, Chicago, Barcelona, Switzerland, and beyond. These new aerial landscapes proved just as popular and unlocked a whole new audience.
As much as I was enjoying the travel and seeing the world from above, it was not my sole passion in photography. I admired many different kinds of whimsical photographers who provided inspiration to me. One of these was Gastón Ulgade. I had met him at the Miami Art Basel event the previous year and he and I had a lovely chat and he said he would love to take me to Bolivia, where he led photographic expeditions to the largest salt flats in the world in a place called Salar de Uyuni.
That April, I packed my bags, and along with my sister and my best friend, I arrived with a suitcase full of plastic flamingos, neon craft paper, bright rugs, rubber balls, and balloons. The goal was simple—make the surreal feel even more surreal. He was a true surrealist and I was a whimsical novice with a good eye. The conditions were harsh- it is dry and cold at nearly 12,000 feet in elevation, and the white salt creates colors so bright on the kelvin scale, they are not seen anywhere else in world in such vivid display.
Gaston kept pushing: again, bigger, try it another way. One afternoon we brought out two llamas. The scene was good, but not quite it—until I remembered the black and white balloons we’d stashed in the van. We tied them on with fishing line so they draped like necklaces. Just as the llamas fell into perfect symmetry, altitude sickness hit me like a hammer. I lay down on the salt; my sister and best friend yelled, “Gray, get up and take the shot!” I stood, lifted the camera, and somehow managed to get the shot.
That image became instantly, indelibly tied to my name.
2014: On my own and the Big Break
Back home in early 2014, I realized I needed to scale. I had enough money put aside to hire a small ecomm web agency and we built graymalin.com around one principle I learned from the flea market: you need to give customers the ability to order art that arrived framed, ready to hang.
I knew that a website on artwork, however, was not going to be enough on its own. I needed to offer other products, and a bigger brand ethos for my quickly growing audience on Instagram. As we began to finalize the site for launch, I created a few small collaborative lifestyle products with other brands: phone cases, needlepoint belts, even surfboards. I launched it all with a new tagline for my brand “Make Every Day a Getaway”. And I created this video for the new brand launch:
During this year, I hired my first full time employees, as I needed more help than I realized to help sustain the growing business. When the Bolivia series, Far Far Away, launched, things grew substantially. At the same time, in the summer of 2014 I launched a collaboration with a British swimwear company, Orlebar Brown, printing my photos on their sleek suits. Working with a European label exposed my work to a global audience.
As if this was not enough awareness- I was about to get my big break. I received a call in fall of 2014 from the Today Show, shockingly, to let me know that a fellow Texan, Jenna Bush Hager, was not only a fan but wanted to interview me for a segment on the Today Show. I could never have imagined this. Jenna came to my home in Los Angeles and interviewed me about my career.Still in disbelief, a week later I made an already-planned trek to New York City, and asked her if she would like to join me in a helicopter shoot above the city, including capturing the iconic 30-Rock that Today is so well known for. She was excited and thought it would add a great bit of heft to the feature piece. I think she was right! Here is the piece that debuted on the NBC on December 4th, 2014. You can watch it in full here https://www.today.com/video/aerial-photographer-takes-art-to-new-heights-248842309733
I remember this day vividly. I woke up early to watch it- I had not yet seen it myself! Then, my phone exploded with texts, my website crashed, and I crawled back in to bed.
Thanks for following along up to 2014, I'm grateful you came on this first leg of the journey. Next, I'll share the journey from the 2010s—2015 onward—when collaborations begin and animals wander into the frame. In the meantime, please check back daily for anniversary updates, limited drops, and a couple of surprise announcements. Cheers to what’s ahead!
Xx,
Gray