Artist Blog Ryan McGinley

What interests me about Ryan McGinley's photographs in relation to my project is the often warm yet unsaturated tones of his color palette. While sometimes he will go about employing a cooler color palette such as in the wrangler ads they are always tones that are without specific spark bright flashy color. I chose to show the pictures above due to the fact that his fine art photos more often than not feature persons who are mostly naked if not sparsely dressed.

not only do i enjoy his color palette and wish to employ it further in my own, i also feel an affinity with his working method. Specifically in the project, i know where the summer goes.

“It’s really a world–you have to remember that. People look at photographs and believe them as truth and they always will. People look at my photographs and think this is real–this life exists. Even if they know that it doesn’t”

[S]kateboarding is a lot like photography because skateboarding is about making something out of nothing. You’re using the urban landscape as a playground and you’re making ideas for doing skateboard tricks–using a handrail or some yellow curb on the sidewalk–and photography is about the same thing for me [ . . . ] You have to sort of create these scenarios to shoot, these ideas to work, and you have to use the world as the backdrop for your photograph.

i like this quote as he refers to a similar working mode as my own. rearranging reality into fantastic situation that do not exist too far from the truth that speak to specific experiences.

from a Time magazine article speaking mostly to the youth centered nature of his work.
"Photography is about freezing a moment in time; McGinley's is about freezing a stage in a lifetime. Young and beautiful is as fleeting as a camera snap--and thus all the more worth preserving."

i think it is worth noting how while he has only done a few print ads they work in the same way as his fine art works. youth centered and obsessed, illustrating an emotional state of being a young adult. there is no shift in the subject matter the fine art works the same as the advertising seeking creating attractive objects and an attractive situation all manufactured in the same method as you would find an advertising shoot executed.