Like German-born photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, who began his career documenting the European club scene for British magazines like ID and the Face (and now has a retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden), McGinley is an artist equally at home on the printed page or the gallery wall. After working for Index and Vice, McGinley graduated to the New York Times Magazine, which commissioned him to photograph Olympic swimmers in 2004, and this month his dreamy pictures of Kate Moss are featured in W. McGinley also does a good bit of advertising work—for Nike, Zune, Virgin Mobile, Verizon, and Puma, among others. There's nothing unusual about this; artists need to pay the bills. What's striking is how easily McGinley's signature style translates from one platform to the other. His shots of naked twentysomethings riding bicycles through the countryside mean more or less the same thing on the walls of the Whitney or in
an ad for Puma. McGinley has essentially created a successful lifestyle brand—a stylish fantasy of youth, beauty, and hedonistic fun."I like the age when you’re just getting out of school and you have the feeling that you can do anything. They’re optimistic and excited about everything, and the Man hasn’t brought them down yet. I’m always looking for people I feel an affinity with. I don’t use professional models. I have a girl who does casting for me and I send her around the world to music festivals and art schools, looking for interesting people. They’re usually artists in some way, and rebellious or punk or bohemian. And they usually have homemade tattoos—I’m not looking for that specifically, they just always have them."
— Ryan McGinley
"I like that period of life when there’s lots of confusion and opportunity and angst. I like when you can feel that kind of energy in the photographs."
— Ryan McGinley, Interview Magazine, 2010