Born in Amsterdam in 1957, Ari Marcopoulos came to New York in 1979 and quickly became part of the downtown art scene that included up-and-coming artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Robert Mapplethorpe. Since then, Marcopoulos has become recognized as a key documentarian of contemporary culture as it unfolds: recording the emerging hip-hop scene, shooting snowboarders hurtling down a vertical mountain face, or chronicling the vicissitudes of his own family life, Marcopoulos' works unerringly capture the zeitgeist.

Marcopoulos appears to have an uncanny connection with the people he photographs, from Andy Warhol to Kiki Smith, John Cage to LL Cool J, and many other characters both celebrated and unknown. His self-taught style brings his subjects in close and captures, without sentimentality or voyeurism, the intimate essence of their daily lives. Populated with idiosyncratic characters, each of Marcopoulos' photographs is particular to a unique time and place; yet his images reach us through their expression of familiar themes such as the meaning of family, the solitude of nature, and the quest for adventure. Like all great photographers, Marcopoulos has the ability to distill a riveting and timeless image from the flux of activity that surrounds us.

The Cat features Marcopoulos's work in the world of snowboarding. It is a b/w portrait of the Norwegian boarder Terje Haakonsen, filled with years of photographs not just of "the Cat" at work but of his life, his family, his friends, his home. Haakonsen (born in 1974) is widely considered one of the most influential snowboarders of all time and was one of the sport's early icons, Half-pipe World Champion three years in a row not long after that contest was established. This is the first of a series of Marcopoulos' portraits books of subjects in the contexts of their home lives.