Schooled by Andy Warhol and Irving Penn, photographer and filmmaker Ari Marcopolous began shooting street culture in '80s-era New York, which included the downtown art scene, hip-hop figures, and graffiti artists. He quickly proved his ability to assimilate into a given community and gained access to the subcultures of skateboarding and extreme snowboarding. Marcopoulos's simple, straight-forward images reveal an engagement and connection with the intimate lives of people living on the ragged edges of society. His later images of his young sons in Northern California emphasize his own role as an equal performer in the environments he photographs.

Marcopoulos's work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Interview, Blind Spot, and Transworld Snowboarding, as well as in many editions and monographs. The Berkeley Art Museum presented Marcopoulos's first mid-career survey in the United States in 2010, and his video Detroit was a part of the 2010 Whitney Biennial.