Ryan McGinley
Encyclopedia
Ryan McGinley is an American photographer living in New York City
who began making photographs in 1998. In 2003, at the age of 25, McGinley was one of the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art
. He was also named Photographer of the Year in 2003 by American Photo Magazine. In 2007 McGinley was awarded the Young Photographer Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography
.
, is the youngest of eight children. From an early age his peers and mentors were skateboard
ers, graffiti
writers, musicians, and artists that were considered to be on the fringes of society. He moved to the East Village
in 1998, and covered the walls of his apartment with Polaroid
pictures of everyone who visited him there.
McGinley had his first public exhibition in 2000 at 420 West Broadway in Manhattan
in a DIY
opening. His first book of photos, The Kids Are Alright (2002), was handmade and distributed to people he respected in the art world and sold at the exhibition. One of these books was given to Sylvia Wolf who ushered his work onto the walls of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Ryan McGinley has been long time friends with fellow downtown
artists Dan Colen
and the late Dash Snow
.
T4s and Leica R8s. McGinley has drawn much inspiration from the film by Terrence Malick
, Days of Heaven
.
In an April 2010 article in Vice Magazine, photographer Ryan McGinley identified Gilles Larrain
as one of his early influences with his book Idols (1973). http://www.viceland.com/int/v17n3/htdocs/gilles-larrain-368.php
and museum
s. He had solo shows at MoMA P.S.1 in New York (2004), in Spain
at the MUSAC
in Leon
(2005), and is featured in public collections in the Guggenheim Museum
, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
; and the The Whitney Museum of American Art
in New York.
In 2005, he was exposed and laureate to the Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award, France.
In 2007 McGinley exhibited his show, Irregular Regulars, at Team Gallery in SoHo
.
In 2008 he exhibited, I Know Where the Summer Goes, also at Team Gallery.
In the fall of 2009 he showcased 24 new photographs at the Alison Jacques Gallery
in London.
In October 2010 McGinley opened his exhibition, "Life Adjustment Center" at Ratio 3 in San Francisco. Debuting two groups of black and white portraits and color photographs.
and managed commercially by Shea Spencer at Artist Commissions.
after introducing and photographing two of its members in Tulum in 2004.
In 2008, the Iceland
ic post-rock
band Sigur Rós
used one of McGinley's images for their fifth album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
. The video for the first track from the album, "Gobbledigook
", was inspired by his work.
magazine.
Ryan McGinley has contributed editorial portfolios to the New York Times Magazine
, Oscars, 2004 Olympic Swimmers, and 2010 Winter Olympics.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
who began making photographs in 1998. In 2003, at the age of 25, McGinley was one of the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
. He was also named Photographer of the Year in 2003 by American Photo Magazine. In 2007 McGinley was awarded the Young Photographer Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography
International Center of Photography
The International Center of Photography is a photography museum, school, and research center in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...
.
Early Years
Ryan David McGinley, born in Ramsey, New JerseyRamsey, New Jersey
Ramsey is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. It is a suburb of New York City, located northwest of Midtown Manhattan. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 14,473....
, is the youngest of eight children. From an early age his peers and mentors were skateboard
Skateboard
A skateboard is typically a specially designed plywood board combined with a polyurethane coating used for making smoother slides and stronger durability, used primarily for the activity of skateboarding. The first skateboards to reach public notice came out of the surfing craze of the early 1960s,...
ers, graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
writers, musicians, and artists that were considered to be on the fringes of society. He moved to the East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
in 1998, and covered the walls of his apartment with Polaroid
Instant film
Instant film is a type of photographic film first introduced by Polaroid that is designed to be used in an instant camera...
pictures of everyone who visited him there.
McGinley had his first public exhibition in 2000 at 420 West Broadway in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
in a DIY
Do it yourself
Do it yourself is a term used to describe building, modifying, or repairing of something without the aid of experts or professionals...
opening. His first book of photos, The Kids Are Alright (2002), was handmade and distributed to people he respected in the art world and sold at the exhibition. One of these books was given to Sylvia Wolf who ushered his work onto the walls of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
"The skateboarders, musicians, graffiti artists and gay people in Mr. McGinley's early work 'know what it means to be photographed,' said Sylvia Wolf, the former curator of photography at the WhitneyWhitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, who organized his show there. "His subjects are performing for the camera and exploring themselves with an acute self-awareness that is decidedly contemporary. They are savvy about visual culture, acutely aware of how identity can be not only communicated but created. They are willing collaborators."
"People fall in love with McGinleyʼs work because it tells a story about liberation and hedonism: Where GoldinNan GoldinNancy "Nan" Goldin is an American photographer.-Life and work:Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest...
and Larry ClarkLarry ClarkLawrence Donald "Larry" Clark is an American film director, photographer, writer and film producer who is best known for the movie Kids and his photography book Tulsa...
were saying something painful and anxiety producing about Kids and what happens when they take drugs and have sex in an ungoverned urban underworld, McGinley started out announcing that “The Kids Are Alright,” fantastic, really, and suggested that a gleeful, unfettered subculture was just around the corner—'still'—if only you knew where to look." Link
Ryan McGinley has been long time friends with fellow downtown
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan is the southernmost part of the island of Manhattan, the main island and center of business and government of the City of New York...
artists Dan Colen
Dan Colen
Daniel Colen is an artist based in New York. His work consists of painted sculptures appropriating low-cultural ephemera, graffiti-inspired paintings of text executed in paint, and installations.-Education:...
and the late Dash Snow
Dash Snow
Dashiel "Dash" Snow was an American artist, based in New York.-Life:Dashiel A. Snow was born in 1981, the son of Taya Thurman and Christopher Snow...
.
" 'I guess I get obsessed with people, and I really became fascinated by Dash,' says McGinley, who shares a Chinatown loft a few blocks away from Snow’s apartment with Dan Colen, whom McGinley has known since they were teenage skateboarders in New Jersey." Link
Art
Since 2004, Ryan McGinley's style evolved from documenting his friends in real-life situations towards creating settings where the situations he envisions can be documented. McGinley shoots 35mm film and makes his photographs using YashicaYashica
Yashica was a Japanese manufacturer of cameras.-History:The company began in December, 1949 in Nagano, Japan, when the Yashima Seiki Company was founded with an initial investment of $566. Its eight employees originally manufactured components for electric clocks...
T4s and Leica R8s. McGinley has drawn much inspiration from the film by Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning almost four decades, Malick has directed five feature films....
, Days of Heaven
Days of Heaven
Days of Heaven is a 1978 American romantic drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick and starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard and Linda Manz. Set in the early 20th century, it tells the story of two poor lovers, Bill and Abby, as they travel to the Texas Panhandle to harvest...
.
"Like his earliest works these images were documentary. He was a fly on the wall. But then he began to direct the activities, photographing his subjects in a cinema-verite mode. “I got to the point where I couldn’t wait for the pictures to happen anymore,” he said. “I was wasting time, and so I started making pictures happen. It borders between being set up or really happening. There’s that fine line.”"
In an April 2010 article in Vice Magazine, photographer Ryan McGinley identified Gilles Larrain
Gilles Larrain
Born in Da Lat, Vietnam in 1938, Gilles Larrain was first a painter, who went through the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and one of the pioneers in kinetic art in the 1960s, using air, smoke, light, water and neon tubes...
as one of his early influences with his book Idols (1973). http://www.viceland.com/int/v17n3/htdocs/gilles-larrain-368.php
"Photography is about freezing a moment in time; McGinley's is about freezing a stage in a lifetime. Young and beautiful is as fleeting as a camera snap--and thus all the more worth preserving." Link
Exhibitions and collections
In recent years, Ryan McGinley's photographs have been exhibited in galleriesArt gallery
An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...
and museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
s. He had solo shows at MoMA P.S.1 in New York (2004), in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
at the MUSAC
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León
The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, better known as the MUSAC, is a contemporary art museum in the city of León, Spain....
in Leon
León, Spain
León is the capital of the province of León in the autonomous community of Castile and León, situated in the northwest of Spain. Its city population of 136,985 makes it the largest municipality in the province, accounting for more than one quarter of the province's population...
(2005), and is featured in public collections in the Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
; and the The Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
in New York.
In 2005, he was exposed and laureate to the Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award, France.
In 2007 McGinley exhibited his show, Irregular Regulars, at Team Gallery in SoHo
SoHo
SoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores...
.
"McGinley went on a two-year road trip, traveling to dozens of Morrissey concerts in the US, the UK, and Mexico. The resultant photos, many of which are densely saturated in the concerts’ colored lights, feature candid shots of fans, regularly zooming in for seductive close-ups of enamored youngsters—a celebration of the ecstatic cult of fame and its ardent enablers." link
In 2008 he exhibited, I Know Where the Summer Goes, also at Team Gallery.
"But his favorite subject remains youth, as his 2008 exhibit, "I Know Where the Summer Goes," proves. In that collection, McGinley's troupe travels the country as he photographs them, sometimes clothed and often not, while they leap fences, lounge in a desert, play together in a tree." Link
In the fall of 2009 he showcased 24 new photographs at the Alison Jacques Gallery
Alison Jacques Gallery
Alison Jacques Gallery is one of London's leading contemporary art galleries. The gallery, established in 2004 in a small townhouse off Bond Street, London W1, relocated in 2007 to an ambitious space at 16-18 Berners Street opposite the Sanderson Hotel in Fitzrovia...
in London.
In October 2010 McGinley opened his exhibition, "Life Adjustment Center" at Ratio 3 in San Francisco. Debuting two groups of black and white portraits and color photographs.
Representation
Ryan McGinley is represented by Jose Freire at Team Gallery in NYC, Chris Perez at Ratio 3 Gallery in San Francisco, Alison Jaques in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and managed commercially by Shea Spencer at Artist Commissions.
Music
McGinley is credited for the formation of the New York City based band The VirginsThe Virgins
The Virgins are an American band formed in 2006 in New York, consisting of Donald Cumming , Wade Oates , and Nick Ackerman .Their first outing on the road was a 7-week American tour in direct support for the Australian band Jet...
after introducing and photographing two of its members in Tulum in 2004.
" "Their lyrics are really poetic and very much about New York and the life that we live," says McGinley."
" "Maybe if you change your hair/You'd be good enough," Donald Cumming sneers in "Fernando Pando." He knows of what he sings: Cumming has been a fixture of New York's downtown demimonde since he was 16, making films and modeling for hip young photographer Ryan McGinley." Link
In 2008, the Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
ic post-rock
Post-rock
Post-rock is a subgenre of rock music characterized by the influence and use of instruments commonly associated with rock, but using rhythms and "guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures" not traditionally found in rock...
band Sigur Rós
Sigur Rós
Sigur Rós is an Icelandic post-rock band with classicaland minimalist elements. The band is known for its ethereal sound, and frontman Jónsi Birgisson's falsetto vocals and use of bowed guitar. In January 2010, the band announced that they will be on hiatus. Since then, it has since been announced...
used one of McGinley's images for their fifth album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
-Track listing:-Personnel:* Jón Þór Birgisson – vocals, guitar* Kjartan Sveinsson – keyboards* Georg Hólm – bass* Orri Páll Dýrason – drumsStrings: Amiina...
. The video for the first track from the album, "Gobbledigook
Gobbledigook
"Gobbledigook" is the first track on Sigur Rós' album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. It premiered on Zane Lowe's Radio 1 show in the UK on May 27, 2008.On the European cover of the album, the song's title is spelled "Gobbeldigook"...
", was inspired by his work.
Culture
McGinley interviewed long time friend and mentor Jack Walls for an article in ViceVice (magazine)
VICE is a free magazine and media conglomerate founded in Montreal, Quebec and currently based in New York City.Vice is available in 27 countries...
magazine.
"I spent two weeks making 500 hand-drawn balloons for Jack Walls’s 50th birthday party."Link
Ryan McGinley has contributed editorial portfolios to the New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
, Oscars, 2004 Olympic Swimmers, and 2010 Winter Olympics.
External links
- Ryan McGinley
- Team Gallery
- Irregular Regulars
- I Know Where the Summer Goes
- Ratio 3
- Alison Jaques
- Mörel Books
- Artist Commissions
- http://www.morelbooks.com/Ryan_McGinley.html
- New York Times Magazine - Oscars
- New York Times Magazine - 2004 Olympic Swimmers
- 2010 Winter Olympics
- New Yorker
- Timeout
- Artforum
- TIME
- Rolling Stone
- Vice
- Sigur Rós Album Cover
- Young Photographer Infinity Awards
- A Young Man With an Eye, and Friends Up a Tree by Philip Gefter, New York Times, May 6, 2007