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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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Ryan McGinley
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: October 17
Photographer
Ramsey
New Jersey
Time
Jersey
Couldn
Art
Back
Work

More quotes by Ryan McGinley

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I'm not going to hide behind anything.
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'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 thing for me about moving to New York was that I got to create a new family.
Ryan McGinley
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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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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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You find the people that you need to find. There's this gravitational pull.
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
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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 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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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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I was growing up in the suburbs I was one of eight kids. So I did have a community when I was younger, but all of my brothers and sisters were older.
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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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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A lot of my close friends have committed suicide or died of heroin overdoses.
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.
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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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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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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I'm always interested in an atmosphere where dreams and reality mingle on equal terms.
Ryan McGinley