Ryan Inc.

STYLISTS: Jaclyn Hodes, Annette Lamothe-Ramos
HAIR: Martin-Christopher Harper for TRESemmé, Marguerite Jukes for Bumble and bumble
MAKEUP: Kristin Gallegos for Bryan Bantry, Emi Kaneko
LOCATION: Fast Ashley's
DIGITAL TECH: Kenny Ulloa at Industrial Color
LIGHTING: Greg Haerling
ASSISTANTS: Emilie Branch, Grace Florez, Chad Moore, Pete Voelker
Special thanks to BabyCakes NYC for all the cakey yumyums.

Vintage t-shirt

TIM

I met Tim through Terence Koh seven years ago and I immediately started photographing him because of his alien eyes. He has a dent in his butt from flying through the air and landing on a tree stump while snowboarding. He's in many of my early photos. There's one where he has a black eye from punching himself in the face in a game of Truth or Dare and one with him and Dakota naked in the ocean at Coney Island in the early morning. When we took that photo, about 100 people were lined up to get baptized in the ocean at sunrise. They weren't happy, but we were there first. Tim's been my right-hand man on every major photo shoot I've ever done. Also, he drives way too fast. One time we were driving in a snowstorm in the mountains of Vienna and he was doing 110. It was terrifying.

Jeremy Scott dress

VERONICA

Veronica does casting and special projects for me. Her whole job is running around to concerts and various Whole Foods looking for tall boys with shaggy hair and girls with freckles. She's worked for me for three years now, from back when I used to sleep in my studio and open the door in the morning in my boxers. I originally hired her as an intern just because she told me that her favorite band was Belle and Sebastian. Her favorite things are birthdays and hula-hooping (she wants to break the world record). She once drove my van from California to New York in two days.

Converse by John Varvatos cardigan, Ben Sherman shirt, Altamont t-shirt

LEO

In high school, I used to work at a skateboard shop called Surf and Turf in Hoboken. Leo worked in a nearby skateboard shop called Premiere. So we met through skateboarding. Leo was a great skater. We used to call him Marblemouth because of how he talked. My favorite story about Leo is the time he showed up at my door at 11 AM, all freaked out, and he clearly hadn't slept. He goes, "Ryan, you have to take a picture of me, look at this," and he lifted up his shirt and he had gotten 11 homemade tattoos over the course of the night: "Yes, I am blind" on his back, "FTW" on his leg, an X over his heart, his own signature on his foot, "DAD" on his other foot, "Forget Me" across his stomach, and others that were basically half-finished wasted scribbles. Since then he's gotten most of them covered up with new tattoos.

APC shirt

MARC

Marc's been my boyfriend for ten years, on and off and on and off and on and off again. He was the first person who I photographed obsessively, and he used to hate it too—he'd always flip the bird in front of his face or stick his tongue out to mess with me. I guess he was sick of being photographed by then because he and his twin brother were big models in the 90s during the whole "waif period." They modeled with Linda Evangelista and stuff like that. Marc didn't want to go out with me at first because he thought I was too young and crazy, but I kept pestering him and eventually won him over. I was so crazy for Marc that one time when he tried to break up with me, I hung outside of my fifth-floor window until he said he would take me back. It worked! (I was the pull-up king in grade school so I knew I could hold out.) But that was a long time ago. It's taken me a decade to learn how to be a good boyfriend.

Marc Jacobs cardigan, American Apparel t-shirt, Bailey hat

JACK

Jack is like a big brother to me. He has a million amazing stories about growing up as a gangbanger in Southside Chicago, being in the navy, being Robert Mapplethorpe's boyfriend, having his portrait painted by Basquiat, etc., etc. Every day I call him up on the phone and sighs and says, "Ryan, what's a bitch to do?" He has a tattoo on his leg of a penis with wings that morphs into a knife cutting into his leg and it says "Pursuit Until Capture." Jack moved to Cherry Valley, New York, four years ago to write a book of prose poems and it's finally done. It's called

The Ebony Prick of the White Rose's Thorn

and it will be out in April.

Helmut Lang shirt

NEVILLE

Neville is such an enigma—no one really knows exactly what he does. He doesn't say much but he's everywhere. He's a curator, a commenter on contemporary art, and he dabbles in commerce and fashion and God knows what else. He does everything, it's crazy. But he's like the opposite of a self-promoter. You can't get a word out of him. He was the first person to come see my photos ever. I just pulled out boxes of photos from under my bed and we sat in my bedroom looking at them. I recently found out that he builds muscle cars from scratch. I'm constantly being surprised by him, like, "What, you do THAT too?" He wears a jean shirt, jeans, and motorcycle boots every day. He also started my agency, AFG, with Shea.

Comme des Garçons t-shirt

JOSE

In 2003, I was in a group show called "My People Were Fair and Had Cum in Their Hair" at Jose's gallery, Team. I remember seeing him around at art fairs and Belle and Sebastian concerts and he would always smile at me, like a really exaggerated smile where you could see all his teeth. Then one day he called me and asked if he could show my photographs and he's been my gallerist ever since. Before Jose was a gallerist, his first job was working for PiL, running errands and picking up their dry cleaning, then he did tour managing for bands like A Certain Ratio and the Virgin Prunes. He always says that he feels like what he does today is largely the same thing—just babysitting the talent.

APC shirt, Ben Sherman tie

BEN

Ben is my videographer. He films every photo shoot that I do—we must have thousands of hours of footage by now. He's also my movie buddy. I go see three or four movies a week with him. We just saw

The Dark Knight

in IMAX the other day. Oh, and he's allergic to cold! Literally. On our shoots, he's usually real loud and does funny voices, but when the weather drops he gets red spots all over himself and becomes a little bitch. He's like my little brother. He likes to fart on my head any chance he gets, and in exchange I watch him poop. Like at rest stops, I hang over the stall and just stare at him. Or, like, I'll steal a tray of mints from a restaurant counter and throw the whole thing at him while he's on the toilet. Or throw water over the stall at him. You know, high jinks.

Industry shirt

DAKOTA

Dakota is the best girl model I've ever shot. Her energy is insane. She raises the bar for all the other models, with her shenanigans and sense of humor and the sexuality that she brings to everything. When I did a shoot with a live 450-pound black bear (who, incidentally, was on the cover of last year's

Vice

Fashion Issue), she made out with it. Like, she stuck her tongue in the bear's mouth and the bear was licking her face and stuff. She's jumped off a five-story building and run naked through a supermarket. She was the first person I shot running through fireworks, which became a big theme for me. But she was the first one crazy enough to just jump in without the slightest hesitation. I recently photographed her having an orgasm for the cover of the

New York Times Magazine

.

APC cardigan and necklace

AMY

Amy and I met while working for

index

magazine about nine years ago, and we've probably talked on the phone for over 2,000 hours since then. The first magazine assignment I ever got was to shoot this Brit-pop band Amy was interviewing. I was so nervous I shot the band for 20 minutes before realizing there was no film in my camera. After that I started calling her randomly when I was wasted and I'd yell nonsense at her for a while and then pass out on the phone. I guess she thought it was funny. She helps me whenever I have to write something, and she planned my first cross-country photo shoot by making binders full of maps to weird nudist camps and secret swimming holes and hot springs, which she decorated with sparkly letters.

Vintage jacket, American Apparel hoodie, H&M t-shirt, Uniqlo jeans

CHRIS

Chris is my producer and one of those guys who can do anything, like build a house from scratch and then punch through a flaming window to rescue me after our van has flipped over (true story). We call him MacGyver. He carries two or three car batteries through the woods and caves in a backpack like it's nothing. Those things weigh 40 pounds each. The first time I ever saw him he was sitting at a café by himself, writing in his journal on a snowy day. I wrote, "I wish I was your friend" on a napkin with my email address and handed it to him as he was leaving. He wrote me, "I don't think my girlfriend would approve, but I sure do like your photos." So he became one of my models, but he was always too busy saving the day behind the scenes to do any actual modeling. Now he's everyone's boss, sometimes even mine. Every summer, we throw everyone into a 15-passenger van with an attached trailer full of gear, and somehow Chris manages the chaos.

Marithé + François Girbaud shirt, vintage t-shirt

RAINA

I was so intimidated by Raina when I first met her because she was a big model in the 90s, when she was in her early teens. She was the it-girl, like on the cover of every magazine, and every big photographer had shot her. Then she decided she hated modeling and went to RISD to study painting, where she met Dan, my roommate. They went out for many years and she stayed at our apartment a lot and that's how I started taking photos of her. One time on the road we were playing Truth or Dare and for her dare, Raina had to wear scuba goggles that me and Jake had peed into. Meaning, like, we filled up the goggles to the brim with our piss and she had to put them on and open her eyes with them on for three seconds. She did it with no problem and then ran and took a shower.

Burton shirt

TEDDY

I met Teddy in high school. He was the captain of the football team and the prom king. One day he said to me, "I don't wanna hang out with the jocks anymore, I wanna hang out with the weirdos. Can I be friends with you guys?" After high school we were roommates for five years and he paid for all the Epson ink cartridges that went into printing out my first handmade photo book (it was like $1,000 to print 100 50-page books). Now he's the John Belushi of downtown—he's the funniest guy and everyone loves to party with him. I've seen him eat pizza while sleeping. I'm not even joking. He has an awesome wife, Yvette, who loves to feed him chicken sandwiches all day. All he ever talks about is food and how gay I am.

Theory jacket

KATHY

Kathy is the picture editor of the

New York Times Magazine

. My first assignment for her was photographing the Strokes in 2002. They lived across the street from me on 7th Street so it wasn't that hard. Then I did an underwater portfolio of the 2004 US Olympic swim team and spent a few months traveling around the US photographing and swimming with people like Michael Phelps. (I raced Phelps while wearing swimming fins and he still beat me.) Doing all that traveling opened my mind to the possibilities of what I could do with my own work. It basically gave me the idea for my road trips, like to travel throughout the US and shoot extensively 90 days in a row.

Ermenegildo Zegna jacket, Barney's shirt and bow tie

GEORGE

When I was at Parsons in 2001, George taught a class called "Nudity, Sexuality, and Beauty in Photography." He was

Vibe

magazine's photo director at the time so he held his class in his office at

Vibe

after-hours since he was so busy. I remember going through the magazine's lobby and there were all these big light-box photos of Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige. Then we'd go into his office and learn about Claude Cahun and Hans Bellmer… It was surreal. Before George became a photographer he used to make oil paintings of transsexuals. Now he's the chair of the photography department at Parsons and makes beautiful erotic photos of women. George's class had a big influence on me and is pretty much why I shoot nudes now.

aNYthing t-shirt

DONNIE

Donnie has been my printer since college. Since I didn't study photography, I never learned how to properly color-print. Together we've developed a style over the years—a color palette for the way my photos look. When I choose a photo, we print it every color of the rainbow and every shade from light to dark. Then we stand there and look at them for hours and decide which is the best one. He's a darkroom wizard.

Vintage shirt

NICKY

Nicky is my superintern. She's so sweet and cute I want to squeeze her all the time. I like to call her Nicholas. She's a hippie-punk feminist and doesn't believe in deodorant so when we're traveling for months in a van, I always drag her into the shower with me and wash her hair. Sometimes I can't understand what she's saying—it's like she doesn't have enough breath for a full sentence so everything comes out in high-pitched squeaks. But it doesn't matter because she's worked with me so much by now that she knows exactly what to do and where to be. She's always by my side when I'm shooting. She makes great oldies playlists too.

JAKE

I first saw Punk Rock Jake six years ago—he was dancing on the bar of the Hole with his pants around his ankles. I knew I wanted to photograph him. He embodied everything my photos were about back then, all that wild, drunk, crazy energy. I've gotten in many fistfights with him over the years and once had to hog-tie him so he wouldn't destroy this house we were staying at in Vermont. He's the most difficult model I've ever worked with, but I love him like a brother.

Undergear by International Male shirt, Loro Piana scarf, Adam Kimmel glasses

DAVID

I became close with David in the last two years. We met on a plane to Florence where we were both going to model for the menswear designer Adam Kimmel. We had an instant bond. He's a photographer and he's the pretty hippie boy who looks like a girl in a lot of Nan Goldin's early black-and-white photos. His own work is black-and-white portraits that look like Renaissance paintings. David and I spend a lot of time talking on the phone about photography and cute boys. He has a house up in Bovina, New York, and I love visiting him up there. He has my favorite diet, he eats doughnuts and ice cream constantly. And for some reason, he is a maniac for Russell Stover white chocolates.

PAUL

My dad was in the Korean War. He tells the same story to every person he meets about how he was in a battalion of 32 guys and he was one of the only three who made it out alive. He got shot a few times and lost his hearing in one ear so when you talk to him you have to yell real loud. He's obsessed with exercising. He's 80 years old and does 100 push-ups every day. Whenever I come home he makes me get on a scale even though I've weighed 160 pounds for the past eight years, and then he challenges me to a push-up contest. He always wins.

Ralph Lauren jacket, Brooks Brothers shirt and tie

SHEA

Shea is my agent. You want me, you gotta go through this guy. He wears a Brooks Brothers suit every day, but he's like Superman and at the end of the day he take off his suit and puts on the same Minor Threat t-shirt he's had for years and goes to black-metal and straightedge-punk shows. He has a framed picture of Ian MacKaye in his bathroom, which he took at a show when he was a teenager. That scar on his forehead is from when he put his face through a car windshield. I talk to him like five times a day.

Vintage t-shirt

DAN

Dan has been my roommate since 1997. Living with him is like living with three people because he's so gargantuan and you can hear him lumbering around from a mile away. He's been six-foot-six since I first met him when we were 16. I've seen him do the craziest things anyone's ever done, like I've seen him tear apart a bar, throw a pallet through a gigantic window, rip a sink out of a bathroom wall, and run naked through the streets of Manhattan on angel dust. Now he's a successful artist who makes large-scale realistic paintings of bird poop. We just signed another two-year lease on our place. I don't think I will ever escape living with him.

Jill Anderson dress

JULIE

Julie owns Pochron photo lab and has a pet pig named Emmett, who graces this issue's cover. Julie got Emmett when he was just a little piglet and they told her he would stay that size. Now he's the size of a small hippo. When you go to the lab, you can take a handful of popcorn and throw it on the floor and watch Emmett eat it. One time I was eating Pixy Stix and I dropped one and Emmett ran over and grabbed it. I tried to take it away from him and he bit my finger really hard. Since then I don't fuck with him. Anyway, all the great artists print at Julie's lab. I would go into all the stuff she does that makes my photos look great, but it's incredibly complicated. Also it's a secret.

Altamont shirt, Uniqlo t-shirt

MARC

Marc is my studio manager and a master photo retoucher. He's a big germophobe and uses Purell like 100 times a day. He interned for two and half years before I hired him—see, it pays to stick around. At first, Marc traveled with me when I followed Morrissey on tour in 2006, but then he decided he never wanted to travel again. He needs everything to be in order because his dad is an antiquer and he grew up in a house full to the brim with knickknacks and clutter. He loves to throw stuff out and he LOVES to shred things. So now he runs the studio, and he's organized all my shit so thoroughly that I have no clue where anything is anymore.

Levi's jeans

KUNLE

Look at his nipples. He's used snakebite suction cups to enlarge them for years. I love his tattoos too. "Titpig"? I think it's a leather-community term. He's really into bears. If you're walking down the street with him and he sees, like, a garbage man, he practically comes in his pants. He goes, "Oh my God, look at him, look at his GIRTH!" I met Kunle skateboarding at Astor Place around 1995 and everyone called him Kool-Aid because they couldn't pronounce his name. He destroyed the city with his tag, Earsnot, and he started the graffiti crew IRAK. He was my first real gay friend. He used to get in so many fights with graffiti writers because all those guys were such homophobes. He would beat them up so bad and then yell, "You just got your ass kicked by a faggot!" He's a great role model for gay people.

MARCEL

Marcel is probably the best male model I've ever had. He's got the million-dollar face and he's so androgynous, but even more than that, he has the best attitude. He's down to do anything and he's always excited about it. He'll jump on a trampoline or roll down hills or go into freezing lakes for hours. He'll play Truth or Dare and make out with everybody—boys and girls (no one can believe he's straight)—and have a smile on his face the whole time. Working with him is really a collaboration. He always anticipates what I want and his answer to everything is, "Yeah, that sounds fun!" We call him the Centaur because he's completely hairless from the waist up but covered like a carpet from the waist down.

MARY JANE

This is my mom. I'm her eighth child. She had seven kids in seven years, and then 11 years later she had me. According to her, I was "a surprise from the baby Jesus." She goes to church every day and she loves

Reader's Digest

. She loves to photocopy and mail me articles about, like, a guy getting lost in the mountains and then Jesus guiding him to safety. I don't think she's ever told a lie in her life. Every time we talk she says, "Oh Ryan, you march to the beat of your own drum."

GRACE

This is Grace. She was interning for

Vice

and was helping out on Ryan McGinley's shoot when Ryan spotted her and asked her if she'd get naked and pose for him on the spot. Grace was like, "What? Who? Where? Me? What?" But then she did it and look how pretty. Ryan's always looking for new people to model for him, so if you're young and bored, go to ryanmcginley.com and fill out the model application. Don't be scared.