Go Behind the Lens and Between the Pages with Chris Malloy

How do you capture a legendary life and career in 240 pages? For Chris Malloy, it took all-nighters, dozens of coffee pot refills, and an endless stream of stories to curate 'A Life Of Waves' for 11x world champion, Kelly Slater.

Photographer Todd Glaser spent over 15 years with Kelly Slater documenting all that comes with pro competition on the World Surf League tour and his personal adventures chasing swell to the furthest corners of the globe. After capturing an expansive catalog of Kelly navigating the most technical waves on the planet, his devastating injuries, and the quiet moments in between, Todd and Kelly enlisted Chris Malloy as a Creative Director to find the narrative thread that tied it all together.

"We feel like Chris is the purveyor of cool. Kelly said 'Hey, I think it'd be really cool if we brought Chris in, because he knows me really well, and he could speak for me, and I think you two would work really well together.' If you look at all the projects Chris has worked on, they're all still very relevant, 20 years later. He has a timeless approach, and that's always been my approach in documenting and working with Kelly. So Chris was the perfect partner to champion that."

- Todd Glaser

Using exclusively Todd's images, personal narration from Kelly, and a thoughtful forward from the legendary Eddie Vedder, the book is an intimate portrait into the life of the one of the greatest surfers to ever pick up a board. But beyond his technical ability lies a layered and complex individual - an accomplished golfer, musician, inventor, advocate and more. Chris worked closely with Todd and Kelly to craft the structure of the book both visually and narratively in a way that gives the audience a deeper understanding of who Kelly is that goes beyond just surfing.

"Within a week, I was in deep looking at ten's of thousands of images with Todd. We'd have these big long sessions where we'd print out hundreds of images and lay them out on the ground, we'd walk through them and make piles of what we loved and then start over again."

- Chris Malloy

Spanning much of Kelly's career, the archive of imagery had no shortage of mesmerizing shots of Kelly navigating waves in his signature style, but the collection also featured candid and quiet moments of Kelly's life outside of the media craze that have been unseen until now. Chris and Todd approached the project with meticulous care and a clear creative vision, curating images that reveal new, surprising facets of Kelly — moments that feel both intimate and previously undiscovered to the audience.

"A lot of my role was to help give an idea of what Kelly's life was like and who he is outside of the barrel of a wave."

- Chris Malloy

From the earliest stages, timelessness was a core sentiment that helped inform the approach behind crafting the book. From each page design to the narrative structure, everything was carefully chosen with intent and responsibility. Chris and Kelly have forged a strong friendship rooted in the love for craft and creative vision that extends back to the early 90's on Hawaii's storied North Shore. From spearheading one of the most influential generations of surfing to pioneering filmmaking in the space that placed more emphasis on narrative and artful storytelling. 

"Chris was our North Star to always just go, okay, this is cool, because Chris thinks it's cool. Because if it's not, he'll tell you. He would take the train down from his house and stay with me for 3 or 4 days at a time. We would just be up all hours of the night, bouncing ideas back and forth and telling stories. And then the next morning, we'd wake up, make more coffee, and then just the chapters started falling into place."

- Todd Glaser

"I always think about the audience and how we want them to feel - before, during and after we share something with them. I'm always going to feel like that kid who tears the cellophane off a record and inspecting it, looking at the liner notes, calling a friend to talk about it... I never stop seeing creative work as a young or smart viewer."

- Chris Malloy

"You can track views and likes but did you get into the hearts and minds of somebody? Did you inspire somebody? I love that that's not quantifiable through technology yet. Or ever."

- Chris Malloy