I really don't want to be part of just one group. I'm interested in doing everything - making music videos, shooting campaigns, having -gallery and museum shows, making movies. Everyone wants to put you in a box, and I'm afraid I'm not that kind of person.

Ryan McGinley

Categorized in : Kind

You have to be able to observe life as if you were a camera all the time, constantly looking at light and the way that things are placed and the way people hold themselves. You need the ability to see something in someone or something that no one else really sees and be able to bring that to light. Basically, you have to be an obsessive crazy person.

Ryan McGinley

crazy light people

My photographs are a celebration of life, fun and the beautiful. They are a world that doesn't exist. A fantasy. Freedom is real. There are no rules. The life I wish I was living.

Ryan McGinley

real fun beautiful

I think that's an important lesson for young people who want to be artists: You have to find someone who believes in you and who will help you find that time where you don't have to think about a job but just making work. If I didn't have those people in my life, I wouldn't be in the position I'm in.

Ryan McGinley

jobs believe thinking

I got a lot of attention when I was really young, and people have it in their minds that I'm still 24 years old. So I made the decision that I had photographed everything I was interested in in New York. New York is a town you have to embrace, but you also need to leave. I may revisit it one day, but for me it's a place to live rather than one to make work in.

Ryan McGinley

decision mind people

I have a really big family, and pretty much all my work is about my brothers and sisters. I'm the youngest of eight - my mom had seven kids in seven years, and then she had me 11 years later - so I was basically raised by all these teenagers.

Ryan McGinley

teenager mom brother

It's weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image.

Ryan McGinley

divorce photographer

I've been attracted to Kate Moss since I was a teenager.

Ryan McGinley

moss kate teenager

You find the people that you need to find. There's this gravitational pull.

Ryan McGinley

people needs

Just having the camera, being able to pull back from situations and be an observer, it saved my life... I realised I could find these intimate moments and that people trusted me. That, basically, my camera was magic.

Ryan McGinley

intimate-moments magic people

I don't want to be an artist that gets stuck doing one thing. I don't want to be an artist who people look back at and say, 'His early work was really great.

Ryan McGinley

artist people looks

I'm making the art for me first. I'm making it because these are the pictures I want to see. I'm making pictures that don't yet exist.

Ryan McGinley

want art firsts

What I really believe is that there are no coincidences anymore.

Ryan McGinley

coincidence believe

I want to venture into film more, and I think that a nice way to transition into doing that would be a documentary. I think it would be interesting to find one person that really fascinated me or maybe a band and travel with them, but I don't think I could do it like I used to do it.

Ryan McGinley

nice interesting thinking

Most of the e-mails I get nowadays are from students who ask me how I got my start. In truth its from having a really supportive family but also having a good patron who will help you - like financing all those early trips I took.

Ryan McGinley

supportive mail helping

I slowly began making a few photos with animals over the years, and I liked how people reacted to them. When I would have the animals on set, I'd notice the way the models would interact with them and there was so much true emotion that you rarely see between two human beings.

Ryan McGinley

animal two years

Just being friends with people now for over 15 years, you realize what we all came out of. What we came out of was the intense feeling of growing up. It sounds kind of cliché, but it's true.

Ryan McGinley

growing-up people years

I know that my mind is so A.D.D., and I want instant gratification - and photography can provide me with that - but at some point, I want to make an independent feature.

Ryan McGinley

independent photography mind

I can work with shyness, but for the most part I want people to feel comfortable with me. It's really more about the photographer feeing comfortable right when they walk in that makes the subject feel comfortable.

Ryan McGinley

photographer want people

All my work, really, is based on my brothers and sisters. I had so many adventures with them and a big part of the work is to recreate those. It's easy for me to be around a lot of people, because I can retreat. I can watch everything.

Ryan McGinley

brother adventure people

A lot of my close friends have committed suicide or died of heroin overdoses.

Ryan McGinley

heroin close-friends suicide