Meet a Creative: Malik Martin

From the time Malik was a teenager growing up in South Memphis, Tennessee, he always had a camera strapped around his neck. “I’ve felt for a long time that it’s important to capture the things around me,” he says. By 2016, when he was 26, he was a freelance photographer for The Tri-State Defender, a historically Black newspaper, shooting everything from protests to funerals. In 2018, he began climbing at a local gym and, a year later, he was hired by The North Face to shoot the Ouray Ice Festival in Colorado. While there, he befriended Conrad Anker, who invited him to go on a climbing expedition through Montana and Wyoming. Martin brought along film equipment and other Black climbers and turned the footage into “Black Ice,” a 45-minute film produced by Jackson House Films. He followed that up as the featured subject in “Tools of Ascension” for Yeti and his production “Soul Deep” for Black Diamond. “My work is often described as ‘raw,’” he says. “I show people what it’s like to be Black in nature.”

“I make Black people look powerful,” says Malik. “I’m a storyteller, so I find people where they are and find the power in their story.” 

Near the end of the year, Malik has a film coming out for Burton. “It’s about Black people snowboarding and how hard it is for Black snowboarders to find a foothold in the outdoors,” he says. “I feel like I’m gonna change the whole industry with this film.”