Ryan McGinley « charolastra

Ryan McGinley

22May09

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Ryan McGinley is an American photographer living in New York City who began making photographs in 1998. In 2003, at the age of 24, McGinley was 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.

At an early age he learned how to skateboard and began making trips into the East Village and the Lower East Side to hang out and skate with friends. His peers and mentors were skateboarders, graffiti writers, musicians, and artists considered to be on the fringes of society. He moved to the East Village in 1998 and at one point his apartment walls were covered with hundreds of Polaroid pictures of everyone who visited him there.

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 ended up in the hands of Sylvia Wolf who ushered his work onto the walls of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Since 2004, Ryan McGinley’s style has evolved from documenting his friends in various real-life situations towards creating fantastical settings where the situations he envisions can be documented. For McGinley, it is important that variables remain in the photographic equation where the unexpected can occur. McGinley shoots 35mm film and makes his photographs using an arsenal of Yashica T4s and Leica R8s.

http://www.ryanmcginley.com/