Photo II Blog: Ryan McGinley

RYAN McGINLEY

Out of all the photographers mentioned in last class, the ones whose pictures appealed to me the most were by Ryan McGinley. However, not all of his photographs appealed to me.

Ryan McGinley is a contemporary 35 mm film photographer, born in 1977. He was one of the youngest artists to have a solo show at the Whitney as well as named photographer of the year in 2003 by American Photo Magazine. He work is often compared to Larry Clark, Dash Snow and Nan Goldin.

He beginning works were mostly of his friends, almost always in the nude, in a documentary or portrait style. His work focuses on the care-free, rambunctious nature of teenagers through young adulthood. His work appealed to me more because it wasn't as dark and upsetting as works by Dash Snow or Larry Clark. His use of color is impeccable in many of his images and create some stunningly beautiful images. That was one of the things that originally drew me to his work. I also liked how he uses nudity as a sense of rawness and uses it to capture a person's emotional state or confidence and not always provocatively.

The images of his that I found to be most interesting and striking were the images of the nude figures with sparkler, fireworks, flares, etc. I find these images compelling because of the way the light interacts with the figures and skin of the subject. The use of color is very strong and create a warm tone. This images capture a sense of free-spirit and having a good time being youthful and happy. I loved many of the portraits in his collection and will post some of my favorites below. Overall, I enjoyed his playfulness with color and expression in his portraits (yearbook series especially) as well as the contrasting emotional, more somber portraits. His use of light is excellent as well especially in the portraits that are black and white where you can really see the highlights and shadows on the nude figures.

His newer works are very color-oriented, where the color almost acts as camouflage. The images are usually of nude figures blending in and, in a way, becoming the nature around them. These works are very abstract and more modern that his original works. I am neither in love or dislike these images, they are interesting and compelling visually however I do much prefer his rawer, youthful and expressive images.