Talking To Ryan McGinley About A Show You're Not At

Ryan McGinley's new show – the one we swiped all the pictures in the back of our Fashion Issue from – is open in New York at Team Gallery. Since you're not there and can't ask him to explain his new stuff to you, he had friend and fellow artist Dan Colen ask him about the new work for you. We think that was very thoughtful! Hope you enjoy.

Dan and Ryan in 2003, with melons.

Dan Colen: Are these all the pictures in the show that I’m looking at?

Ryan McGinley:This is the show and the book. It’s 100 black-and-white portraits that I shot in the studio over the course of two years.

So many people have tattoos.

It’s funny, someone was just saying to me that they noticed a lot of the people in the photos have homemade tattoos. Mikey has “Pony Boy” and “Native Blood” and “Wise Up.” His tattoos are amazing. He was once an intern at Team Gallery. This girl is from LA, her name is Rebecca. She reminds me of a young Chrissie Hynde. I love her band of skulls. One of my favorite handmade tats is this girl Julia’s heart by her crotch. It’s really sexy. This guy Jack’s got a spade by his crotch too. Oh, here is Raina with the “Lily” tattoo she got after Lily passed away. I made sure it made it in the photo. This guy Sean has his entire body done. I asked him what he wanted to do and he told me “Make money and get tattooed.” I love that as a life philosophy. I wish I was that focused.

What’s going on with her?

That’s Christie. She broke her arm.

Boy, you shot a lot of crazy people. Who is this girl with the brown hair?

She’s from Paris.

Oh yeah, I know this girl. She must have been psyched to get her photo taken by you. She looks as crazy as she is.

This is my Canadian buddy Matt.

He’s got a gigantic penis!

It’s pretty amazing, dude.

How do you always find those guys with big dicks like that?

I’m gifted in that area.

You fly all these people here?

Yeah it’s a pretty global portrait. People are from LA, Mexico, Georgia, Vancouver,

Russia, Tokyo, Brazil, Australia. I could keep listing cities but it would take forever. Some of the people are from New York and some people I’ve worked with before. I wanted to keep the family in there.

And you fly all these kids here for like, a day and put them up somewhere?

Yeah. I also usually give them a night or two to spend in New York and enjoy themselves and hang out. You know, I tell them to take the Staten Island Ferry and drink a beer at dusk or go to the top of the Empire State Building because even though it’s cheesy it’s still really beautiful. Stuff like that.

Were there even more people than what I’m seeing here? Or this is everybody?

No. I shot 200 people, and this is only 96.

Did you shoot a lot of these portraits in my room?

Your room?!

Yeah this used to be “my” painting studio you know.

[laughs] Well, it’s my photo studio now. After you left we burned so much sage. I smudged the shit out of this place.

Yeah, that was probably a good idea. What is that yellow thing hanging from the ceiling?

I use a bright yellow backdrop when I shoot these portraits. The way that the saturation converts looks very beautiful. It gives me a really rich grey in the alternate reality of black and white. When I started these I tested out all the colors of the rainbow, and the yellow was the one that had the best tonality when it was transferred.

How are these going to be displayed? Are they going to be in one line across the whole gallery?

No, you’re going to walk into the gallery, and on the left wall there’ll be a stack of three rows of these photographs in the middle of the wall, and then on the right wall there will be these two really huge photographs of stars, like astronomy photos. There’ll be a color photograph of a girl jumping off a cliff on the back wall, one of my falling photos. And in the back room, there’ll be two rows of all the horizontal black-and-white portraits, and then a big golden cave photograph that looks like molten lava.

Why did you decide to put in the other photos, and not show just the black-and-white series?

Because I don’t want my shows to be too themed anymore. A lot of my shows have been in the past and I just feel that it’s too specific. My mind doesn’t work like that so why should my shows look like that? I’m working on so many different projects at the same time so I want the show to be diverse with imagery. I made a lot of these black-and-white photos when I was shooting the cave work.

Yeah, people have more to work with. They can tell you go to all these different places and do all these different things.

I want people to look at black-and-white portraits, and then turn around and get absorbed in the saturated greens or reds of these huge, 9-by-12-feet night sky photographs.

Have you shown these black-and-white photos yet?

Not in New York. I showed 10 in Berlin at the Art Forum art fair this past fall, and then I showed another 10 in Athens, Greece in January.

Hey man, I gotta tell you some bad news. I’m not going to be here for your opening. I’m bummed, man. I have my show opening a few days after yours in Milan and I have a lot of painting to do out there before it opens.

Suck a dick, Dan, I hate you.

Sorry! So, how long did these portraits take you to shoot?

This is about two years worth of work. For each person, I spent between two and three hours shooting them and I shot close to 2,000 photos of each person. Then I whittled it down to one final picture.

Wow, you’re a maniac. Was everybody pretty good to work with?

Everyone’s different. It’s interesting because with this series I didn’t really know most of the models. I didn’t have a real problem with anybody though, nothing serious. Rarely, people who came in were nightmares, and if so I would just shoot maybe ten minutes worth of photos of them and say thank you for your time. But most everyone was pretty cool. I feel bad for the people that were great but unfortunately didn’t make the cut for the final edit. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out, you know. Sometimes it’s just not the right time, the stars aren’t aligned. Out of 200 people shot I got 96 portraits that I feel very proud of.

I could never do it. Your process is insane. I can’t imagine.

You’re the one spending years on one painting. God, remember when you replicated Dash’s wall in oil paint? That took like three years! Anyways, everyone has their own process to figure out a way to arrive at an image that works for them, right?

Do you take naked pictures of them beforehand? So you know what you’re getting?

Half and half. Sometimes people will come in and we’ll do a nude casting with them, but not so much anymore. Most of the time, we usually ask people to email us a picture.

It just seems so lucky. Everyone looks like they could be brother and sister or something. They all look like the family of Ryan.

Well the way that the people look aesthetically has always been based off the way my brothers and sisters looked as teenagers.

Are any of your friends models anymore? I see a few veterans in here. Dakota and Raina are almost going on 10 years of working with you now.

Yeah I still love working with them but it’s also kind of refreshing that I don’t have to rely on my friends to model for me anymore.

I can imagine.

When I first started shooting, it was that confusing period of not having enough money to pay people, asking people to model quite a lot, and really demanding their time. You obviously know from all the wacky shoots we did in the past. I work my subjects hard; it’s a real whirlwind of activity.

Who is this kid again? He’s pretty good.

His name is Jasper. He came into my studio the other day with roman numerals tattooed on his forehead. He’s really dedicated, you know, I love that. I’m thinking of working with him for my next project, because I’m not going to do a road trip this summer.

Last summer was just too crazy?

No, I said I was going to do it for five years and I did. I’ll still always travel throughout the States but just work on more specific projects. I’ve done the “where the road leads us” kinda thing enough. The cave work was a step in a more focused direction about a specific project. We still hit 37 different states over two summers but we only shot in caves.

Yeah, I guess nothing’s forever.

So what do you think? Which ones are your favorites?

I don’t know if I can play that game. I’m not really good at that.

Really? Any girls that you think are pretty?

Yeah. There are some girls that I like. That 60s-looking one, Janelle, she’s the best.

My mom doesn’t like these because she says the genitals are too up in your face.

Did you have her over here?

No, I email them to her.

Why do you do that? That’s so wrong, man. What do you think she’s going to say? What are you doing sending your mother pictures of dicks? Honestly.

Well, you know, I’m proud of these photos and I want my mom to be proud of me. I worked extremely hard on them. I want her to know what her son is up to. I can’t help it if she isn’t a fan of this body of work. She really loved the caves, who knows what she’s going to think? I’m not a mind reader. I mean Jesus is practically naked up on that cross and she looks at that everyday. We have conversations about them and I try to explain to her why I made them and why they’re important to me and to the evolution of the work.

When I look at this project I think a lot about when we were younger and you were taking Polaroids every day of us up against the white wall on 7th Street. For like five years. Remember all the silly things that we used to do? The muscle series. The ones with the pillows behind our heads. Every time someone got a haircut – the before and afters. The best ones were the wee hours of the morning when the sun was rising and we were up on the roof high as hell and you’d put us up against the white aluminum. Those were little precursors to these.

Yeah, those were good times.

And the book of the black-and-whites is going to come out soon, for your opening?

Yeah it comes out the week of the show. It’s a really beautiful book. It’s printed gorgeously. Every little minute detail is so well thought out.

Dashwood did it?

Yeah, I brought it to him. I wanted to keep it in the hood, downtown New York.