As the youngest artist to ever show at an American Art Museum, Mission sits down and talks with the esteemed photographer.
When Ryan McGinley answers the phone, I hear birds of the East Village warbling in the background. His voice is kind with a laid back lilt, a trace of his roots in skateboarding. Skateboarding, graffiti, and queer life, he explains, were the triptych of subcultures he set out to photograph at a young age. Before the days of social media, McGinley cobbled together zines to share with friends and people he admired. By the age of 26, he became the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a record he still holds twenty years later.
McGinley has photographed pop culture’s most venerated icons, including Justin Bieber, Beyoncé, Brad Pitt, Zendaya, Miley Cyrus, and Harry Styles, along with his coterie of friends and artists. His work, a whirl of color and hedonistic delirium, invites the viewer to reimagine the beauty on Earth. As bare bodies tumble down sand dunes into a harmony of golden hues and crouch in the shallows of an indigo swamp, McGinley transforms the familiar into fantasy. And through a dreamscape of in-betweens, he captures his subjects in the thrill of a journey—the fever of being utterly alive.
Siena Canales: When did you discover your passion for photography, and what drew you to the medium?
Ryan McGinley: My background is skateboarding—that’s how I first discovered photography. I grew up in Jersey and I worked at a skate shop in Hoboken in the mid-90s. I was the young kid with the digital video camera with the fisheye lens, constantly filming my friends skating. I plugged my video camera into the VCR and recorded what I taped that day and then use another VCR to edit the footage into little skate tapes of my friends. Through that process, I realized that I like the in-between moments more. And then reading skate magazines, I learned about this camera called the Yashica T4, a point and shoot camera with a crisp lens called a Carl Zeiss lens. I could put it in my pocket and put a few rolls of film in my other pocket. It was amazing to be able to shoot high quality photos wherever I was.
Sam, Ground Zero, 2001
SC: Did you come from a creative background like family? Or was this something that you just sort of found on your own?
RMcG: I am the youngest of eight kids. I had a brother who, right at that time, like around 1995, he helped raise me. He was in the city, so I would come in from the late 80s through the 90s. He was an artist—he went to school of Visual Arts. Unfortunately, his life was cut short by AIDS and HIV. He and his boyfriend were drag queens. His boyfriend was a professional drag queen, a Barbra Streisand impersonator. My brother just did it more for fun and a hobby. He would do the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. I would come in and hang out with them in The Village. They introduced me to art that was outside of museums, smaller galleries, like the New Museum or the Whitney. They also introduced me to a community of artists. I learned that the artistic lifestyle was possible.
I also got to meet artists who were skaters, like Mark Gonzales, who is very influential within skateboarding. We were skating underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in ‘95 or ‘96, and he said, “Hey, I have an art show at this gallery.” We went to Electric Gallery with him, and it opened my eyes to the community of artists linked to skateboarding.
When I’m shooting, I’m out on the street, in the protests, I’m always climbing scaffolding, running around. You’ll see me shimmying up a lamppost, climbing and standing on top of a Don’t Walk sign. I thrive in an environment where it’s active and busy.”
SC: What is your creative process like and how much forethought goes into a single shot?
RMcG: I love when things are energized and moving. When I’m shooting, I’m out on the street, in the protests, climbing scaffolding, running around. You’ll see me shimmying up a lamppost, climbing and standing on top of a Don’t Walk sign. I thrive in an environment that is active and busy. Within my own studio, I work with many choreographers. Then, when we’re out in nature, we’ll be out in the woods and climbing trees and in lakes and in different cornfields. I like being active within that landscape to create an image that almost seems impossible. That’s what the camera is so brilliant at doing.
I also love to surround myself with a big team. It lets me create that childhood dynamic, the way I grew up, like I’m a fly on the wall, looking at all of my siblings interacting and things happening. I’ll surround myself with six to eight people, create the circumstances, and then let the dynamics of people unfold as I’m there with a camera to document it.
Left: Untitled. Right: Napanoch, 2002
SC: What types of subjects or themes do you enjoy capturing most?
RMcG: Through the journey of being a skater early on, I met a few people that became my crew. There was one person in particular, a graffiti writer named Earsnot. His legal name is Kunle Martins. We became best friends. I don’t think we saw ourselves within the queer community at that moment because we were interested in graffiti and skating, so we merged those subcultures. Photographing the triangle of those communities—of queer life, skateboarding life, and graffiti life—was something that has always been really important to me.
Being an advocate for my brother early on was also important. This was before there was a cocktail to keep people alive with AIDS and HIV. Unfortunately, my brother passed away before that came out. But being a young teenager, and going to protests with Gay Men’s Health Crisis or ACT UP, and seeing community rally together, and the photography that revolved around that, imagery that came out of ACT UP. And taking up space, being somewhere that you weren’t supposed to be, or protesting on the street. To be a photographer and use my craft to be part of the community, but also to have a purpose—to be an archivist or a documentarian.
“Photographing the triangle of those communities—of queer life, skateboarding life, and graffiti life—was something that has always just been really, really important to me.”
SC: I see so many renderings of beauty and humanity in your work. I’m curious—how photography has informed your conception of beauty or if your conception of beauty has informed your photography?
RMcG: It’s important to have a point of view and to make things look beautiful—like Mission magazine. It’s so nice to incorporate fashion and purpose and activism. For me, going back to those days of early activism, one of the things that really drew me in was fashion. I remember being in high school, and the kids whose style I admired, who listened to bands that I liked, were all part of Amnesty International and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). That’s what got me into those groups—being drawn to the fashion first and then getting locked into the message. Within photography, especially within activism, it’s important to make things look beautiful to get people’s attention if they don’t necessarily get the message at first.
Left: Red Mirror, 1999. Right: Roller Coley, 2007
SC: Your first exhibition was at the Whitney when you were 25? 26? Two decades ago. You’ve always had a lot of emotional and philosophical depth in your work—are there any recent philosophies or ideas you’ve found yourself channeling into your work recently? Or any changes that you’ve noticed in your own POV?
RMcG: Definitely. I had a show at the Whitney in 2003 and it was a total game changer. It opened up every door of opportunity for me. At the time, I was the youngest artist to have an exhibition at the Whitney. I took every opportunity at that time to be able to have shows and galleries and museums and to work with major fashion magazines and work with major musicians and to shoot big advertising campaigns. All the things that came with that, I embraced, and it was great. I started my own studio and was able to have a team of people that I was working with. I did a lot of road trips across America to create work. Everything that I wanted to do in photography—that exhibition really opened the door to.
There were some artists at the time that were mentors of mine, that I’m still friends with, but also when I was really young, helped guide me. There was an artist named Jack Walls. He is a poet and a writer, and he was a lover of Robert Mapplethorpe until Robert passed away. At that time, he was really a guiding light. There was Larry Clark, who is an amazing, amazing photographer who was also an early mentor of mine. And then Jack Pearson, who is also a great artist. Just to shout out those people for giving me some mentorship early on.
Twenty years later, I’m able to do that for younger artists that have sort of come through my studio, or been on my road trips. I spend a lot of my time talking with people struggling with addiction, especially if they’re a creative person. Being able to speak with them non-judgmentally and be a conduit to a different lifestyle, if they’re living on the edge, or just struggling. Those are two things that are, at this point in my career, really important to me. Drugs and alcohol were part of my story. I’ve been sober for a long time now. It’s important for me to help younger artists who are struggling with that.
Right now, I do a lot of work with this woman Qween Jean, who is just the most amazing activist in New York City. I spend a lot of time with her and her organization, Black Trans Liberation. Being able to be there with a video camera or still a camera and being able to archive or be able to amplify her cause and what’s going on with trans women right now. And of course, what’s happening in America with all the legislation that’s happening, anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ. To use my craft and my time and energy to be there on the frontlines when people are protesting.
SC: Have there ever been any instances where you’ve adapted to an unpredictable variable in a way that you felt enhanced the outcome of the shoot in the end?
RMcG: Oh, yeah, totally. I never know what I want to get. I’ll find the people that I think will be amazing models and figure out the landscape. And as a photographer, working within the landscape, I never want to know the photo that I’m gonna get. I always want it to be a surprise. And the creative process is a discovery to figure that out. To work through all those elements, whether it’s snowing, raining, super sunny, it’s dusk. That’s the exciting part to me, and that’s what makes it so fun for everybody.
Everybody who’s part of that process is searching. I know the elements, the ingredients, that work. If I’m shooting at dawn, a lot of the time we wake up at 4am, or we wait until 6pm to shoot until 9pm during the summertime dusk. It gives me a beautiful color palette—pale blues or light pinks or purples. I love when Mother throws something crazy my way. Normally, a photographer might just be like, “Okay, let’s call it a day.” But on a really rainy day or with extreme fog, that is when exciting photographs are made
SC: Do you ever feel creatively blocked? If so, do you have any routines or behaviors that you do when that happens?
100%. I’ve felt creatively blocked a lot. I always suggest this to young artists when they’re blocked: an amazing book called The Artist’s Way, written by a woman named Julia Cameron. It is an amazing exercise to help create a blockage and to restart your creativity and get your creative juices flowing.
One of the things that I learned from that book that I think is great is Morning Pages. I have my notebook and pen right next to my bedside so that the first second that I get up, I start writing. I try to write three pages immediately and it doesn’t have to make sense. Usually, it starts out like Page One: me remembering my dreams and whatever kind of weirdness happens within my dreamscape. And then, the second page turns into a Things To Do List or what’s on my mind. It’s supposed to be whatever comes out free-flowing.
Then my third page is like a little prayer. I’ll pray for my mom or friends or just put some good energy on the page and some affirmations. It’s helpful because it opens up creativity from the start of the day. And it gets like whatever’s swimming around in my brain on the page and I’m able to see it. It’s a good creative exercise for artists in general.
SC: Are there any projects or photographs that hold a special place in your heart? If so, could you tell us about them or why they are significant to you?
RMcG: I was just thinking about Paris is Burning. I was watching it the other night with some friends and that documentary has a very special place in my heart. One of the first pieces of art I ever saw that had a huge impact on me was Matisse’s The Dance. It’s four people holding hands and running around nude in a circle. It’s rendered in an abstract way of painting. It’s at the MoMA, in their permanent collection. I saw it when I was in grade school and it had a really lasting impact on me and still does. There’s a nude photograph that Peter Hujar took of this guy named Bruce and it’s a very simple nude. A studio floor and a white wall and a black and white photograph. The subject is probably lit by daylight. It had a huge impact on me as a young photographer, to think that I might be able to find my voice within a studio setting. That photograph really resonated.
Cover image: Ryan and Marc (Red Kiss) 1999
