New York-based artist Ryan McGinley has road-tripped with Brad Pitt, hung out with Kate Moss and got Troye Sivan to strip. Now he’s in Melbourne to explain what drives him.
Already a subscriber?Road-tripping with Brad Pitt across America, New York-based photographer Ryan McGinley shot the Hollywood star tumbling down dunes, frolicking across prairies or simply crouched in fields of tall native grasses staring pensively at the horizon.
The results were portraits of youth in all its insouciance – joyous, carefree, often naked, always self-absorbed – rather than portraits of any particular subject. Sure, the image titles often bore names, but it was the essence of the figure in its setting that was truly compelling.of 1957 and photographer Robert Frank’sseries , McGinley soon found himself being commissioned to shoot celebrities keen to insert themselves into similar trippy narratives.
“For me there is no difference shooting Beyoncé or a skater punk at Saint Mark’s Place,” says McGinley, referring to New York’s Lower East Side subculture haunt., which is presenting 150 local and international photographers in exhibitions and installations around Melbourne and regional Victoria until March 24.
; awarded the Young Photographer Infinity Award by the International Centre for Photography ; and honoured at the Guggenheim’s Young Collectors Ball in 2009.“I don’t overthink things, so while I definitely enjoyed the recognition I don’t believe it changed the way I photograph or the way I behave.”It did make him feel like spreading his wings beyond downtown New York, though. “Not through any kind of rejection, it just felt time to point my camera somewhere else.