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Everyone I'm photographing, I feel like I'm remaking a family, in a way. My brothers and sisters are my heroes. So many of my models resemble them.

Ryan McGinley

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Ryan McGinley
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: October 17
Photographer
Ramsey
New Jersey
Like
Hero
Brother
Remaking
Family
Photographing
Everyone
Resemble
Many
Sisters
Feel
Heroes
Feels
Brothers
Way
Models

More quotes by Ryan McGinley

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A lot of my close friends have committed suicide or died of heroin overdoses.
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I put all of my time into art because I couldn't go back to Jersey and work at Starbucks.
Ryan McGinley
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I went through a pretty big David Bowie period when I was younger, and that has affected me profoundly in my life and my work.
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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.
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I didn't have to be friends with people who were into pop music.
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I think a lot about control nowadays, and I really want to let go and just be more in the moment.
Ryan McGinley
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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.
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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.
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I was studying graphic design at the time, when negative scanners and all that stuff was coming out, and you could do it all in your apartment. So I would shoot, make contact sheets, scan all the cool negatives, and make all these zines and books of my photos to give to my friends. I was really into zine- and bookmaking from skate culture.
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Everyone started to have a camera. That's when I started to travel outside of New York and go into nature.
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There was no luxury. I never got on an airplane until I was 18. We drove everywhere. My dad was like, Waste not, want not.
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From 8 to 19, I was skateboarding every single day. That was my life. I worked at a skate shop. I watched skate videos.
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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
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I'm always interested in an atmosphere where dreams and reality mingle on equal terms.
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You find the people that you need to find. There's this gravitational pull.
Ryan McGinley
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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.
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All I do is make photos. It's my life.
Ryan McGinley
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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
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I knew my ticket out of the suburbs was art school, so I worked really hard to develop my portfolio and get a scholarship.
Ryan McGinley
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When I was in art school, the photo kids were separated from the rest. If you did sculpture or painting or graphic design, you were all taking the same classes, but the photographers just went straight into photography.
Ryan McGinley