Ryan McGinley

Photographer Ryan McGinley has the word penis tattooed on the inside of his mouth. Deeply familiar with the taboo, his quixotic images of often naked, uninhibited friends raise questions around our own judgments around being young and hedonistic. To McGinley, photography feels like an ongoing expedition depicted through images of young bodies suspended in deserts, caves, forests, and highways across America. The stories behind them are full of humming sand dunes, sketchy animal trainers, and homemade tattoos. Despite that, somewhere between tales of naked collage projects and bears trained to eat gummy bears from people’s mouths, McGinley shows us the surprisingly goofy and deeply human process behind his mystical photographs. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Tania Ketenjian:
In 2001, when I was living in the East Village, I was taking a walk through tree-lined streets. A stroll, really. I wasn't headed anywhere in particular, and so I wasn't concerned with time. I happened upon a conversation with a young man sitting on a stoop reading a book. He was strangely aloof and intriguing, and there seemed to be no agenda on either of our parts. We were just engaging in a conversation for this particular period of time. We spoke for 2 hours, and then I never saw him in person again. And it didn't matter. That wasn't the point. A few months later, I was looking at the photographs of Ryan McGinley, an artist who later would be the youngest person to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. And in it was that young man I spoke with. Eric, laying next to a friend, looking passed out on a ruffled bed, its sheets seemingly uncared for, an arm above his head, stopped in a moment of time, much like we were on that stoop in the fall of 2001.

Ryan McGinley has since gone on to win prestigious awards, to show his work in all parts of the world and in international magazines. He has done several series of works for the The New York Times and the The New Yorker recently commented on his exhibition in New York, I Know Where the Summer Goes, as— and I am paraphrasing here— nearly perfect. Spring and by Summer Fall is McGinley's latest exhibition, and it is here in San Francisco at Ratio3. When walking into the light-filled space, One is struck by large and small color photographs of young and supple and naked men and women jumping through the air, standing against cliffs, being embraced by bears, standing in fields, living and experiencing what seems like an utterly carefree existence. McGinley has often observed young people as they let themselves go, be it with drugs or sex, at concerts or or in water, there's always this sense of release. And in that release, a deeper sense of mystery and surprise. It is this surprise element that McGinley tends to be attracted to. My name is Tania Ketenjian. This is Sight Unseen. And in this interview with Ryan McGinley, he speaks about the work at Ratio3, about his family, and he shares a secret. I spoke with Ryan at the gallery as they were setting up for the show, so you may hear some noise in the background. This is part two of a two-part interview. Here, he's talking about trips, or lack thereof, he would take with his family. Stay tuned.


Ryan McGinley:
We just did little trips on the East Coast, so I never saw the West or the South or anything. You know, not the first time I went to California, when— this was in 2002, you know, recently, so—


Tania Ketenjian:
I mean, well, I can imagine traveling with, what, 8 kids and, uh— You have 5 brothers and 2 sisters, right? 8 kids and your parents, that would be some trip.


Ryan McGinley:
This wasn't happening. It's not happening.


Tania Ketenjian:
What do they think of, I mean, how involved are they in your life, your family?


Ryan McGinley:
Yeah, they're really involved, surprisingly. They're actually, my mom and my dad are really Roman Catholic, but yeah, they love my work and they've really come around, you know. At first they sort of didn't understand what was going on, you know, 'cause I always, I grew up painting and drawing, so they always thought I was gonna be, either a painter or sculptor or something, illustrator. And I guess when I went, I studied at Parsons and I went to school at Parsons and I actually did want to study illustration and my parents said, "No, go into computers. Do something with computers so at least you have like a backup." So I said, "All right, I'll do graphic design." And then graphic design got me interested in photography and that's how I started making photographs. My parents are great. My mom actually said something really nice to me. I just had an exhibition in New York last month, and she said, "Don't you think it's strange that you travel with around 10, 11, 12, 13 people and you come from a family of 10?" And I thought, "Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, like, good observation, Mom." And then she said, "Don't you also think it's strange that all the models that you're taking photos of look like your brothers and sisters did when you were younger?" And I said, "You're right. Oh my God." Like, you know, I never really thought about it. And she really hit the nail on the head. So, yeah.


Tania Ketenjian:
She really did.


Ryan McGinley:
You know, for me, the idea of photographing so many people is great because it's just, you know, I don't have to participate. I can just sort of be on the sidelines with my camera, you know. Just photographing what's going on, you know. And I mean, just for me, it's a real waiting game, you know. I just wait for something to happen, you know. I could pick the people. I could pick the locations. And I can put everyone together and, you know, organize everything, but really, with all of my photographs, you know, it's just waiting for something to happen, you know, and then being ready for it.


Tania Ketenjian:
So you like to be in— I mean, you said this earlier, you like to be invisible to a certain extent. But you're so open in this. I mean, your look, your manner is very inviting. So it's invisible, inviting.


Ryan McGinley:
Well, I mean, you have to have a strong, I guess, I don't know. I guess you just have to know what you want. And I know what I want, you know? I know where I want to go. I know the things that I want to photograph. I know the people that I want to photograph. And I know what I want them to do. But when it's happening, I really don't want to be there. I mean, I want to be there, but I don't want to be part of it. I just want to sort of, you know, I just lost my thought. Sorry.


Tania Ketenjian:
That's okay. I'll take you into the other room though. I want to do this little one. When I saw this online, I thought, I was sure it was going to be much bigger. I was amazed by the ribs of this person's body. They're really thin. So obviously you had printed a bunch of versions and this one was the best.


Ryan McGinley:
Yeah, this is, yeah, it's a small one, 5 by 7 inches, and you know, that's the best part about it is that when, you know, I decide that I want to print that image and that's going to be an image that's going to be in the exhibition, you know, sometimes you think it's going to look great big and it looks terrible big and it looks good, you know, the size of your hand. And that's what happened with this photograph, you know.


Tania Ketenjian:
What do you do with all the ones that you get rid of? I mean, that you don't use? I'm sure people have asked that, but what do they— do they sit in your studio? Do you get— do people get special Ryan McGinley rejects?


Ryan McGinley:
No, there's no rejects. There's only— they're in editions of 3, so 3 of them only exist. The ones that get printed up just get shredded and recycled. And with all of the photos that I go through to choose the images, I go back to those rolls and I cut up people's pictures to make collages. And I haven't shown any of the collages yet, but I think probably in about 2 years I will. They're going to look really cool. Think of like, you know, maybe like a high school yearbook collage like that, but all naked people.


Tania Ketenjian:
That does sound really cool. Is this Utah?


Ryan McGinley:
This is Idaho. It's a cave called the Windy Cave. And I always hit up all of my friends for all the local spots. So it was this girl that I knew and she has a ranch out in Idaho and she said, "Oh, there's this place that I used to go hike with my mom and my dad and it's this really great cave and, you know, you should shoot there." She brought us up there and it's just, yeah, I don't know, it's just this really big cave. It took us about 3 hours to hike there and made photos the whole way and then we got to the cave and I made photos inside the cave and that's it. It's kind of nonstop.


Tania Ketenjian:
What happens with the relationship after? With the relationship, you know, you must bond so much with these people over that month and then, you know, how do you translate into normal day-to-day relationship, not, not— What about photography relationships?


Ryan McGinley:
I don't have normal day-to-day relationships.


Tania Ketenjian:
You don't?


Ryan McGinley:
I mean, you know, I go out to dinner with, you know, people and, you know, we remain friends, but I think it's, you know, the most time that we spend together is on the trips. I mean, I'm like a crazy workaholic. I'm in the studio all the time and I always have like a million projects going, so I don't really hang out so much, but when I do, I just, you know, go out to dinner with somebody or something like that.


Tania Ketenjian:
Do you have really close friends? Do you have a partner?


Ryan McGinley:
I have boyfriends, you know, but sometimes they usually don't last that long.


Tania Ketenjian:
Because you're a workaholic.


Ryan McGinley:
Yeah, I think that I'm definitely dedicated to my work and that always becomes a problem. And I travel so much, you know. I live in New York, but I'm actually only there about 5 months out of the year and then, you know, the other 7 months I'm all over the world, doing projects, doing exhibitions, making photos of people. So.


Tania Ketenjian:
So the intimacy of your life gets fed in those few tight intense months and then you're on your own. I mean, it's really interesting, the extremities of that life.


Ryan McGinley:
Yeah, it's like, you know, I definitely live a— I don't know. It's a crazy life, you know. It's not normal, you know. I don't think many people could do it. I definitely think that there's few people who could sort of live that way. But I think you figure out how to make it work over the years. I think gradually, sort of, I've evolved into this photographer artist guy that just has gotten used to like, you know, someone calling me up and hopping on an airplane like in a few hours and flying to Europe and then like, you know, coming back and then just getting up one day and going on the road for 3 months. And, you know, you shoot every day and you come back home and, you know, then it's sort of complete isolation and editing and then it's on to the next project. So, yeah.


Tania Ketenjian:
That's perfect, that's perfect. Your life in a nutshell right there in 30 seconds. Okay, let's take this one as the last one. I like the kind of goofy look that this kid has on his face. I mean, he's just, I don't know, it's interesting. There's a certain reserve but openness. He's feeling self-conscious, but then he's obviously not.


Ryan McGinley:
It just, it's kind of nice when you make photographs that look exactly like an artist that you like, or maybe I'm like, this photograph actually just looks like a cover of an old vintage pornographic magazine. Like, you know, from the '60s, and he sort of like has that boy-next-door look. I think it's always nice when an artist does that. You feel like, you know, not all the time, but you know, sometimes when you just feel like you're channeling something. And yeah, that's it. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just a photograph where he is actually— we were camping out and he was actually having sex with one of the girls on the trip, his girlfriend. He just woke up and he just gave me this look like, 'cause I was like, "Oh man, I heard you last night," and he's kind of looking at me like, "Yep, you did." So that's exactly what's going on in this photograph.


Tania Ketenjian:
No privacy whatsoever. How many colors did you do this in?


Ryan McGinley:
Not many. This is actually exactly how it looked. It's really, usually when you could tell when the photograph is not really, manipulated, the color isn't manipulated because you look at the skin tones and you know, you can't change someone's skin tones that much. So it was, so it's basically the location is giving you all these like really vivid colors, you know, it's in the Badlands. The Badlands is in the Dakotas and I just always wanted to shoot there. One of my favorite filmmakers is Terrence Malick and he made a film called Badlands, and he also made a film called Days of Heaven, and they're actually two of my favorite films. And his sort of philosophy on filmmaking is that he shoots film during— it's called the magic hour— when it's about an hour before the sun rises and about an hour before the sun sets. So it happens twice throughout the day, and it just gives you this really magical light, you know. It's just really beautiful in the way that the light falls on skin. And it's just gorgeous. And I've always sort of believed in that philosophy, and I'm always trying to shoot at those two times. Usually it ends up being later in the day because I'm a night owl and I never wake up early. So if I'm shooting early, it's usually because I've been up all night. Yeah, I don't know. That's what's up with this photo. And this photo, we shot for— usually my photo shoots last every day for about 6 or 7 hours. And we just shoot nonstop. And it's funny because you never know when you're going to make a photograph. And this photo was actually the third photo that I made of the day, and we shot maybe, you know, 7 hours, probably 100 rolls of film. So you just never know when it's going to happen, you know.


Tania Ketenjian:
I always love that magic hour, that term magic hour, and I do love the magic hour too. And I also really love the Badlands, and actually when I— went there, I thought the ground made noise. I tried to record the ground, 'cause it's got something really magical about it.


Ryan McGinley:
Yeah. A lot of times we'll be shooting and it'll be a really shitty day out, and we'll call it, we have a name for it called the tragic hour. So, which is kind of nice when it's just really terrible light and just everything looks so bad and, you know. And then it's interesting that you were talking about the ground making noise because this summer one of the things— I usually have a few themes for each of the trips. This summer I wanted to go to a lot of sand dunes. So we hit up about 13 different sand dunes all over the US. And on a few of the sand dunes it was really weird when you would walk up them, the really steep ones, it would make these sort of humming noises where every step you took it would go, "Mmm, mmm." And I was like, "Wow, this is crazy." And I have a producer now that I work with, and he's supposed to know everything for me, you know. He knows what to do if a snake comes or what to do if a bear, like, you know, make sure everyone's happy. And I said, "Is the sand supposed to make noises like that? Is there gonna be like a sand avalanche or something?" And he goes, "No, no, it's cool, don't worry, sand makes noise." And I looked at him and I said, you're such a fucking liar, man, you don't know. I said, that's crazy, this is crazy, like sand does not make noise. And so sand just made noise. And you know, sometimes the earth makes noises. That's the way it goes. Them's is the breaks, you know, as long as no one's getting hurt, then it's good.


Tania Ketenjian:
Well, since you mentioned the bear, then I want to end with that one. When I saw this, I thought maybe it was a bear costume, but obviously not. So describe it for me and then just take me there.


Ryan McGinley:
The bear we shot outside of Duluth, Minnesota, and we found this sketchy animal trainer who had lots of strange animals. And, you know, we went to him and we started off the day shooting with baby deer, and then we went to to a fox, and we shot with a possum, and we shot with little baby skunks, and we shot with little baby bears. And then at the end of the day, there was this really big bear, and I said, "Oh, I really want to shoot with the big black bear." And he's, you know, the guy said, "That's a 450-pound black bear. It's deadly." I thought like, "Yeah, that's awesome. That's what I want to do." And he said, "No." He said, "Well, actually, you know, what it does is you put a gummy bear in your mouth," And then the bear will come up on you and it will give you a kiss and it takes the gummy bear out of your mouth. And I thought, wow, that's awesome, I really want to do that. So, you know, I got a few brave models to go to the bear and they put the gummy bear in their mouth and the bear came up and gave them a kiss. And in this photograph, the bear just decided to crawl up on this guy's head. And that's it. That's how I made the photograph, you know. It was really wild. It was cool. It was, you know, after it we were really excited and I don't know, we got to go to Chili's. That's a big thing on the trip, you know, at the end of the day ending up at Applebee's or Chili's. That means it's a really good day.


Tania Ketenjian:
Yeah, that means you're definitely traveling across America. That's what that means. So you're going home on Sunday and then how long are you going to be at home?


Ryan McGinley:
I'm in New York until June 1st and then I depart on another journey for 3 months. So I'm gone June 1st through September 1st. Yeah, that's it. Another trip around the United States. If anybody has any cool places for me to shoot around your local neighborhood, email me on my website, ryanmcginley.com official website.


Tania Ketenjian:
You should go to Roden Crater.


Ryan McGinley:
We went to Marfa, Texas last summer. That was really nice. And we stayed at the Chinati Foundation and we went and we kind of shot. We didn't shoot the Judds, but we shot in that field. It was nice. It was really special.


Tania Ketenjian:
I have the card from the manager of the Dairy Queen in Marfa, Texas. Really?


Ryan McGinley:
Yeah. Nice. Did he ask you out on a date or something?


Tania Ketenjian:
No, it's a she. And my travel partner, who's my best friend, was obsessed with Dairy Queen. And so we stopped in there and got the card from the manager. You should try Truth or Consequences too.


Ryan McGinley:
Oh yeah, we have a sign actually. Every summer we do homemade tattoos and everyone sort of has a homemade tattoo from the trip and we gave someone a Truth or Consequences tattoo. New Mexico, right? Yeah.


Tania Ketenjian:
Do you have a tattoo?


Ryan McGinley:
Yeah, I do.


Tania Ketenjian:
What does it say? Yeah, I want to see it. Oh my God, I've never seen a tattoo in a mouth. What does it say?


Ryan McGinley:
It says penis. I never had a tattoo. And, you know, we get them on the trip and to commemorate the trip and to remember it. And the first year that I started doing these trips was in 2005, and they asked me, "What tattoo do you want?" And I said, "I don't know. I think my mom would be really mad if I got a tattoo on my body," or "I just don't want a tattoo on my body." But then I always thought about those old skinhead tattoos. Skinheads would always have stuff tattooed in their mouths. And I thought, maybe I'll get one of those old skinhead tattoos. And we do them with a needle and India ink. So it was a 4-person operation, and 2 people held my lip open, and then the other person blotted out all the blood. And then there was my friend who did the tattoo, and it took about 2 hours, and they just wrote the word penis gigantic. In my mouth. So now you know my big secret.


Tania Ketenjian:
Great, that's a perfect ending then. Okay, thanks so much. Those were the words of artist Ryan McGinley. His current exhibition titled Spring and by Summer Fall is at Ratio 3 and is his first on the West Coast. To learn more about his work and to see the images, visit ryanmcginley.com. If you're in San Francisco, go see the exhibition at Ratio3, and for more info, visit Ratio3 Gallery. This is part 2 of a 2-part interview. My name is Tania Ketenjian. This is Sight Unseen. You're listening to KALX in Berkeley.