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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.

Ryan McGinley

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Ryan McGinley
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: October 17
Photographer
Ramsey
New Jersey
Dad
Waste
Never
Like
Drove
Airplane
Luxury
Everywhere

More quotes by Ryan McGinley

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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.
Ryan McGinley
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You find the people that you need to find. There's this gravitational pull.
Ryan McGinley
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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.
Ryan McGinley
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I spent all of my money on film. I remember I would do these set-design jobs or transcribe or just anything to get, like, a $100 check and go immediately to Adorama and buy expired film.
Ryan McGinley
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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.
Ryan McGinley
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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
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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.
Ryan McGinley
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The cool thing for me about moving to New York was that I got to create a new family.
Ryan McGinley
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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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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.
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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All I do is make photos. It's my life.
Ryan McGinley
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I'm going to put every aspect of myself out into the world and try to convey it through photography.
Ryan McGinley
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The cool part about New York is that you can do that. You can talk to all the people you admire.
Ryan McGinley
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In a lot of ways I look at these old photos, and I don't know if I would have been able to communicate with these people on this level if I didn't have a camera. I think I would still be so shy.
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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It's weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image.
Ryan McGinley
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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.
Ryan McGinley
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I'm interested in reaching the masses with my work. It's one of my goals.
Ryan McGinley
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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