Born in 1969 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a town to which he, with his wife co-filmmaker Suki Hawley, has recently returned, Michael was known as an amateur photographer for images he captured, while in high school in 1987, of a Ku Klux Klan March down the main Street of that liberal college community. Galinsky was in religious studies at New York University but minored in photography, which led to his career in various aspects of film production. As a still cameraman, he has compiled several published collections about shopping malls around the United States during the 1980s. As a filmmaker, he has been especially interested in indie rock and political documentaries, including a compilation of protest demonstrations over the years that he and Hawley put together, and footage they shot about the controversial Silent Sam sculpture on the University of North Carolina campus.