Ryan McGinley: Celebrating Life
2nd November 2007 – 6th January 2008
FOAM – Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
by Aaron Schuman
2nd November 2007 – 6th January 2008
FOAM – Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
by Aaron Schuman
This essay was first published by Foam, in the exhibition catalogue for 'RyanMcGinley: Celebrating Life'.
Ryan McGinley (b. 1977, United States) lives and works in New York. He enrolled at Parsons School of Design in New York in 1995, and took up photography in 1999, making a name for himself with photos of his friends, including skateboarders, graffiti artists and lovers. McGinley’s work has appeared in many publications, including Vice Magazine, Index, W, Butt, ID, Dazed and Confused, The Fader and New York Times Magazine. His work has been exhibited internationally, most notably in solo shows at museums such as P.S.1 and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2007, McGinley received the prestigious ICP Infinity Young Photographer Award.
For those familiar with New York in the 1970s and 1980s, 421 West Broadway is an address that will forever be synonymous with cutting-edge contemporary art. This was where gallerists such as Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnabend and Mary Boone first introduced the work of Gilbert & George, John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman, Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons and many others to the art market, reigning over both a creative and financial boom that lasted more than fifteen years. But by the spring of 2000, the city’s most influential galleries had collectively moved uptown in search of bigger and hipper spaces, and 420 West Broadway was in the midst of being renovated into luxury apartments.
As an ambitious student at Parsons School of Design, Ryan McGinley saw this as a perfect opportunity. In a corner of the building that was still under construction, he mounted an exhibition of his own work entitled, ‘The Kids are Alright’, a collection of photographs that impulsively documented his friends skateboarding, partying, tagging, shagging, doing drugs, running wild and generally relishing their youth in New York City. In conjunction with the show he self-published a book of the same title, which he sold at the opening, and sent off to a selection of his favorite artists, photographers, editors, gallerists and curators.
The gamble paid off, and within weeks McGinley received commissions from a number of influential publications such asIndex and Vice, as well as high praise from a wide range of important figures within the art world. By 2002, ‘The Kids are Alright’ was hanging on the walls of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and at twenty-four years old, McGinley had become the youngest artist to have ever had a solo exhibition at the museum. McGinley’s subsequent creative evolution has since followed an archetypal American narrative: having found friends, recognition and inspiration in the big city, the artist turns his back on metropolitan life in search of deeper understanding within the expansive American wilderness, often spending long periods of time away from home, and more specifically, on the road.
As an ambitious student at Parsons School of Design, Ryan McGinley saw this as a perfect opportunity. In a corner of the building that was still under construction, he mounted an exhibition of his own work entitled, ‘The Kids are Alright’, a collection of photographs that impulsively documented his friends skateboarding, partying, tagging, shagging, doing drugs, running wild and generally relishing their youth in New York City. In conjunction with the show he self-published a book of the same title, which he sold at the opening, and sent off to a selection of his favorite artists, photographers, editors, gallerists and curators.
The gamble paid off, and within weeks McGinley received commissions from a number of influential publications such asIndex and Vice, as well as high praise from a wide range of important figures within the art world. By 2002, ‘The Kids are Alright’ was hanging on the walls of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and at twenty-four years old, McGinley had become the youngest artist to have ever had a solo exhibition at the museum. McGinley’s subsequent creative evolution has since followed an archetypal American narrative: having found friends, recognition and inspiration in the big city, the artist turns his back on metropolitan life in search of deeper understanding within the expansive American wilderness, often spending long periods of time away from home, and more specifically, on the road.
In the mid-nineteenth century, after studying at Harvard University, publishing several essays and poems in prominent journals, and developing friendships with notables such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau abandoned the city of Boston for the rural, Walden Pond. He explained, ‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.’
In the summer of 2003, McGinley moved out of New York for the first time in years. He rented a house in the mountains of Vermont, and invited friends from the city to visit him every week, primarily so that he could photograph them. During such visits, McGinley attempted to document his guests’ various shenanigans, but soon realized that without the buzz of the city, some intervention was needed on his part to keep both the parties and the pictures interesting. In a recent interview with theNew York Times, McGinley explained, ‘I got to the point where I couldn’t wait for the pictures to happen anymore. I was wasting time, and so I started making pictures happen.’ This gradual shift, from the documentation of spontaneity to the partial construction of events, is familiar to anyone who has followed the developments of photographic practice in recent years. But McGinley’s work from this period stands out as a remarkably successful balancing act, hovering between the elative experience of capturing an instant in a photograph, and the contrivance of knowing that such an instant would never have occurred had it not been for the desire to photograph it.
In the summer of 2003, McGinley moved out of New York for the first time in years. He rented a house in the mountains of Vermont, and invited friends from the city to visit him every week, primarily so that he could photograph them. During such visits, McGinley attempted to document his guests’ various shenanigans, but soon realized that without the buzz of the city, some intervention was needed on his part to keep both the parties and the pictures interesting. In a recent interview with theNew York Times, McGinley explained, ‘I got to the point where I couldn’t wait for the pictures to happen anymore. I was wasting time, and so I started making pictures happen.’ This gradual shift, from the documentation of spontaneity to the partial construction of events, is familiar to anyone who has followed the developments of photographic practice in recent years. But McGinley’s work from this period stands out as a remarkably successful balancing act, hovering between the elative experience of capturing an instant in a photograph, and the contrivance of knowing that such an instant would never have occurred had it not been for the desire to photograph it.
Ten years after Thoreau took to the woods, a prolific New York journalist by the name of Walt Whitman self-published a collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, which included ‘Song of the Open Road’:
‘Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me…
Strong and content, I travel the open road…
You express me better than I can express myself;
You shall be more to me than my poem.’
More than forty years before the automobile was invented, the myth of the American road-trip was born.
Inspired by his successes in Vermont, McGinley took to the road during the three summers that followed, repeatedly crossing the American continent in two vans, and again inviting various groups of friends along in order to photograph their exploits. Each trip was carefully cast, organized and researched, and was primarily centered around locations that suited the artist’s more distinctively defined scenarios. Set in sun-bleached deserts, idyllic swimming holes, verdant forests and roadside motel rooms, McGinley’s road-trip work portrays his cohorts frolicking mostly in nature, and nearly always in the nude. Because of his concentration on youth culture, his diaristic approach, and his off-the-cuff handheld style, McGinley is often linked with photographers such as Larry Clark and Nan Goldin. Yet as with McGinley’s previous work, this recent series entirely lacks the threatening air of danger, guilt, sadness and remorse, which so often permeates the photographs of preceding generations. What was once urban debauchery is miraculously transformed by McGinley’s imposed relocation; hipsters morph into Mercurial nymphs who inhabit a seemingly bacchanalian Neverland, or a shame-free Eden long before the Fall. McGinley’s approach doesn’t appear to contain a single ounce of irony either, a voraciously dominant theme within both contemporary photography and fine art. Instead, there is a powerfully genuine sense of freedom, euphoria and innocence in these photographs – although mostly in their twenties, McGinley’s subjects behave more like young children, laughing, jumping, splashing, cycling, embracing and even bathing together, blatantly ecstatic without even the slightest twinge of self-consciousness.
In a recent article on Jack Kerouac, Louis Menand described the literary atmosphere of 1950s New York in a way that very much echoes today’s art world: ‘Irony was the highbrow virtue of the day, and the Beats had none of it.’ In The Dharma Bums– published half a century before McGinley himself hit the road – Kerouac recounted, ‘[W]e borrowed Sean’s jalopy and drove about a hundred miles up the seacoast to an isolated beach where we picked mussels right off the washed rocks of the sea and smoked them in a big woodfire covered with seaweed…There were natural caves on that beach where Japhy had once brought big parties of people and had organized naked bondfire dances.’ As if he were channeling Kerouac’s Beats directly from the page – in style, in practice, and in spirit – McGinley’s photographs are not only documentation, but are also the manifestation and celebration of complete inhibition. Even though (or perhaps precisely because of the fact that) these images are so thoroughly controlled and then, at the last minute, set free, they seem to inspire that same idyllic state which was often defined by Kerouac and the Beats as ‘Dharma’, when one simultaneously understands and wholeheartedly lives, purely and forever, in the moment.
‘Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me…
Strong and content, I travel the open road…
You express me better than I can express myself;
You shall be more to me than my poem.’
More than forty years before the automobile was invented, the myth of the American road-trip was born.
Inspired by his successes in Vermont, McGinley took to the road during the three summers that followed, repeatedly crossing the American continent in two vans, and again inviting various groups of friends along in order to photograph their exploits. Each trip was carefully cast, organized and researched, and was primarily centered around locations that suited the artist’s more distinctively defined scenarios. Set in sun-bleached deserts, idyllic swimming holes, verdant forests and roadside motel rooms, McGinley’s road-trip work portrays his cohorts frolicking mostly in nature, and nearly always in the nude. Because of his concentration on youth culture, his diaristic approach, and his off-the-cuff handheld style, McGinley is often linked with photographers such as Larry Clark and Nan Goldin. Yet as with McGinley’s previous work, this recent series entirely lacks the threatening air of danger, guilt, sadness and remorse, which so often permeates the photographs of preceding generations. What was once urban debauchery is miraculously transformed by McGinley’s imposed relocation; hipsters morph into Mercurial nymphs who inhabit a seemingly bacchanalian Neverland, or a shame-free Eden long before the Fall. McGinley’s approach doesn’t appear to contain a single ounce of irony either, a voraciously dominant theme within both contemporary photography and fine art. Instead, there is a powerfully genuine sense of freedom, euphoria and innocence in these photographs – although mostly in their twenties, McGinley’s subjects behave more like young children, laughing, jumping, splashing, cycling, embracing and even bathing together, blatantly ecstatic without even the slightest twinge of self-consciousness.
In a recent article on Jack Kerouac, Louis Menand described the literary atmosphere of 1950s New York in a way that very much echoes today’s art world: ‘Irony was the highbrow virtue of the day, and the Beats had none of it.’ In The Dharma Bums– published half a century before McGinley himself hit the road – Kerouac recounted, ‘[W]e borrowed Sean’s jalopy and drove about a hundred miles up the seacoast to an isolated beach where we picked mussels right off the washed rocks of the sea and smoked them in a big woodfire covered with seaweed…There were natural caves on that beach where Japhy had once brought big parties of people and had organized naked bondfire dances.’ As if he were channeling Kerouac’s Beats directly from the page – in style, in practice, and in spirit – McGinley’s photographs are not only documentation, but are also the manifestation and celebration of complete inhibition. Even though (or perhaps precisely because of the fact that) these images are so thoroughly controlled and then, at the last minute, set free, they seem to inspire that same idyllic state which was often defined by Kerouac and the Beats as ‘Dharma’, when one simultaneously understands and wholeheartedly lives, purely and forever, in the moment.
From Titian’s bacchanals and Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur L’Herbe, to the photographs of Thomas Eakins and F. Holland Day, countless correlations could be made between McGinley’s imagery and that found in literature, art history and the conventional history of photography. But looking carefully at McGinley’s oeuvre, it appears that his real inspiration is derived from much more everyday sources, such as the nudist magazines and found photographs that he himself collects, or the slew of amateur pornography and teen snapshots that are now so overwhelmingly omnipresent on the internet. And perhaps by acknowledging such sources, McGinley can be much more neatly placed within the finest traditions of American photographic practice.
In 1938, Lincoln Kirstein praised the eye of Walker Evans as ‘anti-art-photographic…elevating the casual, the everyday and the literal into specific, permanent symbols’. Since Evans, many of the country’s greatest photographers have often used the layman’s ‘mistakes’ as the starting point for their own photographic approach: Winogrand’s signature tilted frame, Friedlander’s invasive shadow or conspicuous reflection, and so on. Similarly, McGinley intentionally incorporates the ‘flaws’ and ‘accidents’ of the auto-focus, point-and-shoot generation into his own creative technique, using glaring on-camera flash, double-exposure, over-exposure, awkward colour-shifts and the subjects’ direct interaction with the camera to introduce further expressive possibilities into his photographs. ‘It could be said - it doubtless has been said - that such pictures often bear a clear resemblance to the Kodachrome slides of the ubiquitous amateur next door,’ John Szarkowski wrote, in his 1976 introduction to William Eggleston’s Guide. ‘[I]t should not be surprising if the best photography of today is related in iconography and technique to the contemporary standard of vernacular camera work, which is in fact often rich and surprising.’ In many ways, McGinley has simply updated this argument, appropriating current vernacular camera work to convey a sense of genuine sincerity to the viewer. In the same way that the polished seamlessness of digital manipulation has all but stripped photography of its perceived veracity, McGinley’s intentional imprecision reintroduces notions of integrity and authenticity to the medium. Despite having been constructed, McGinley’s pictures seem inherently honest and trustworthy precisely because of their amateurish appearance, their idealistic subject matter and their insistent inaccuracy. Ultimately, McGinley has revealed that, within the sophisticated and rather paradoxical world of contemporary imagery, it is not reality but fantasy – portrayed with intentional imprecision – that often rings most true.
See also Top 5 Most Influential Photographers of the Last 25 Years
In 1938, Lincoln Kirstein praised the eye of Walker Evans as ‘anti-art-photographic…elevating the casual, the everyday and the literal into specific, permanent symbols’. Since Evans, many of the country’s greatest photographers have often used the layman’s ‘mistakes’ as the starting point for their own photographic approach: Winogrand’s signature tilted frame, Friedlander’s invasive shadow or conspicuous reflection, and so on. Similarly, McGinley intentionally incorporates the ‘flaws’ and ‘accidents’ of the auto-focus, point-and-shoot generation into his own creative technique, using glaring on-camera flash, double-exposure, over-exposure, awkward colour-shifts and the subjects’ direct interaction with the camera to introduce further expressive possibilities into his photographs. ‘It could be said - it doubtless has been said - that such pictures often bear a clear resemblance to the Kodachrome slides of the ubiquitous amateur next door,’ John Szarkowski wrote, in his 1976 introduction to William Eggleston’s Guide. ‘[I]t should not be surprising if the best photography of today is related in iconography and technique to the contemporary standard of vernacular camera work, which is in fact often rich and surprising.’ In many ways, McGinley has simply updated this argument, appropriating current vernacular camera work to convey a sense of genuine sincerity to the viewer. In the same way that the polished seamlessness of digital manipulation has all but stripped photography of its perceived veracity, McGinley’s intentional imprecision reintroduces notions of integrity and authenticity to the medium. Despite having been constructed, McGinley’s pictures seem inherently honest and trustworthy precisely because of their amateurish appearance, their idealistic subject matter and their insistent inaccuracy. Ultimately, McGinley has revealed that, within the sophisticated and rather paradoxical world of contemporary imagery, it is not reality but fantasy – portrayed with intentional imprecision – that often rings most true.
See also Top 5 Most Influential Photographers of the Last 25 Years
Bloot, mooi, jong
Het mag dan een nepparadijs zijn dat Ryan McGinley in zijn foto’s laat zien, heerlijk is het er wel.
Fotoserie
Een jongen fietst in zijn eentje door het bos. Zilveren zonnestralen schijnen door de takken op zijn blote lichaam.
Een groep naakte jongens en meisjes rent een idyllisch bergmeer in, het water spettert om hun voeten. Een van hen strekt zijn armen de lucht in en springt omhoog. Heel even zweeft hij, al zijn jongemannenkracht en levenslust samengebald in die ene beweging.
Een jongen zwemt onder water, het halflange haar golft langs zijn gezicht, de ogen gesloten. In het water dansen tientallen kleine lichtjes – de zon die wordt weerkaatst door het heldere water – als sterren om hem heen.
AGNÈS TROUBLÉ OVER RIAN MCGINLEYMet de foto’s uit de serie Celebrating Life die de Amerikaanse fotograaf Ryan McGinley maakte van een groep jongeren in de natuur van Vermont, zijn we in het paradijs beland. Bleke bosnimfen en magere jongens van rond de twintig rennen door zonovergoten bloemenvelden, zwemmen in bergmeertjes, stikken bijna van de lach als ze met z’n vijven in een veel te klein bad zitten en springen uitgelaten als kleuters op een trampoline. Iedereen is bloot, mooi, jong. Er is geen terughoudendheid, maar volledige overgave. Geen ironie, slechts onschuld. Het Hof van Eden, voordat Adam en Eva van de appel eten en beseffen dat ze Gods wil negeerden en uit schaamte voortaan hun naakte lichamen bedekken. Een roadtrip zoals de schrijver Jack Kerouac die in 1957 beschreef, waarbij niets moet en niets hoeft, behalve het leven ondergaan zoals zich dat aandient – elke dag opnieuw: „Niets achter me, alles ligt voor me, zoals altijd on the road.”
Foto’s van uitdagende en rebelse jongeren, het liefst naakt, die zich niet zo bar veel lijken aan te trekken van wat de wereld van hen vindt. Het is het handelsmerk van Ryan McGinley (New Jersey, 1977), die in 2000 doorbrak met zijn allereerste tentoonstelling The Kids Are Alright, genoemd naar de muziekdocumentaire over The Who uit 1979. Het waren foto’s van zijn skatende, blowende, drinkende, vrijende vriendengroep in New York. McGinley groeide op in het tijdperk vóór zerotoleranceburgemeester Giuliani, toen de stad rauwer en wilder was dan nu en aids zijn eerste slachtoffers eiste – McGinleys oudere broer (net als hij homoseksueel) stierf aan aids.
Dit is leven op de rand, net niet erover
Het was de tijd dat hiphop, skateboarden en graffiti de straatcultuur bepaalden, en McGinley na school meestal op Washington Square rondhing, de plek waar filmmaker/fotograaf Larry Clark foto’s van de skatende tieners kwam maken en waar hij zocht naar amateurspelers voor zijn controversiële film Kids (1995). Harmony Korine, McGinley’s skateboardvriend, toen nog maar 22, zou er het script voor schrijven (en later zelf films gaan regisseren, onder andere Spring Breakers in 2012). Leo Fitzpatrick, een andere vriend, kreeg de hoofdrol. Voor Chloë Sevigny, die op dat moment nog werkte bij de Liquid Sky Boutique in Lafayette Street, waar de hele skatebende rondhing en waar zij die het betalen konden hun streetwear kochten, betekende de film het begin van haar carrière als actrice.
In The Kids are Alright toonde McGinley snapshotachtige foto’s van zijn geschaafde rug nadat hij op zijn fiets door een auto was aangereden, of van zijn bebloede gezicht nadat hij een aanvaring had gehad met een man die hem uitschold voor flikker. Van vrienden die nog nagloeien van een avond seks, nachtelijke braspartijen en drugsgebruik. Rauw werk dat doet denken aan de foto’s van Nan Goldin, die begin jaren tachtig haar bohémien vriendengroep van de Lower Eastside fotografeerde, of aan de beelden van de Duitser Wolfgang Tillmans, van zijn extraverte scene in de Berlijnse en Londense clubs en de gay scene. Alleen dan zonder de écht donkere randjes. Want die schaafplek, die viel uiteindelijk best wel mee. En dat bebloede gezicht... McGinley lijkt vooral na te genieten van de gebroken neus die hij de man die hem uitschold net heeft bezorgd en zal later, in 2008 op de site van Vice, vertellen hoe hij en zijn toenmalige vriendje gillend van het lachen wegrenden van de plek waar het gevecht had plaatsgevonden.
CV RYAN MCGINLEYAdemen de foto’s van Goldin een destructieve zwaarte, en is de seks bij Tillmans soms expliciet en roepen zijn foto’s daardoor veel weerstand op – bij McGinley zijn het toch vooral vrolijkheid, levenslust en optimisme die de boventoon voeren. In zijn foto’s is weliswaar veel bloot te zien – echt prikkelend worden ze nooit. Het is living on the edge, maar net niet eroverheen.
Sylvia Wolf, destijds curator van het Whitney Museum in New York, was onmiddellijk betoverd door de, zoals ze het zelf noemde ‘primitieve energie’ in zijn foto’s, die haar deed denken aan de schilderijen van Keith Haring en Jean-Michel Basquiat. McGinley was in 2003, hij was toen 25, de jongste kunstenaar ooit met een solotentoonstelling in het prestigieuze Whitney. Daarna ging het snel. Hij won prijzen, exposeerde zijn werk wereldwijd – in 2007 was Celebrating Life nog te zien in het Amsterdamse fotomuseum Foam – en kreeg nieuwe vrienden en bewonderaars: Jack Walls (de vriend van Robert Mapplethorpe), actrice Tilda Swinton, AgnèsTroublé (agnès b.). De modewereld werd aangetrokken door zijn lifestyle-achtige werk en dat leverde hem opdrachten op voor tijdschriften en kranten alsW, Vice en The New York Times Magazine en reclamecampagnes voor onder andere Marc Jacobs, Pringle of Scotland, Wrangler en Levi’s.
Maar er is ook kritiek. Ken Johnson, de kunstcriticus van The New York Timesschreef vorig jaar een vernietigende recensie naar aanleiding van de expositie Yearbook van McGinley in de New Yorkse Team Gallery. Er hingen zo’n zevenhonderd foto’s van – ook hier weer – mooie, jonge, naakte mensen. Veel van hen met tatoeages en piercings. Extravert, uitbundig, provocerend.
Het lichaam als handelswaar
Ogenschijnlijk tegendraads, terwijl het toch duidelijk was dat de fotograaf zich hier keurig voegde in „een kapitalistische economie waarin het juiste lichaam wordt gebruikt als handelswaar”. De muren en zelfs het plafond hingen er vol mee, waardoor de foto’s als een soort behang de galerie bedekten. Iedereen op de foto’s was even gezond, aantrekkelijk en fit, brieste Johnson. „Niemand is dik, oud, gehandicapt of op een andere wijze imperfect. [...] Je hebt meer het idee dat je hier in een hippe kledingboetiek bent dan in een kunstgalerie.” En dan had iedereen op die foto’s ook nog eens zichtbaar lol. „Zeer deprimerend”, concludeerde de 62-jarige criticus.
Er is veel bloot te zien, maar echt prikkelend wordt het nooit
Het klinkt een tikkeltje zuur. Als het gaat om het commercieel inzetten van jeugd en schoonheid zou Johnson zo’n beetje de halve fotografiegemeenschap mogen afserveren. Denk aan klassieke estheten als Man Ray, Horst P. Horst, Irving Penn. En aan fotografen die naam maken in de wereld van kunst- of documentairefotografie en hun stijl vervolgens ten gelde maken in die ‘kapitalistische economie’: Nan Goldin en Pieter Hugo voor Botega Veneta, Magnum-fotograaf Alec Soth voor Jack Spade, Cindy Sherman voor Balenciaga, Marc Jacobs en cosmeticamerk M.A.C., of Anton Corbijn, die voor de recente Dior-campagne actrice Natalie Portman fotografeerde.
Toch is Johnson de eerste niet die zich ergert aan de verwende, westerse jongeren die McGinley fotografeert. Die in zo’n luxe wereld leven dat ze het zich kunnen permitteren de volwassenheid nog even uit te stellen. Een wereld die bovendien ook nog fake is. Want waren de mensen op zijn foto’s in het begin van zijn carrière nog écht zijn vrienden – toen McGinley na de eerste roadtrip naar Vermont merkte dat er zonder de stadse dynamiek toch wel erg weinig gebeurde op dat platteland, besloot hij de spontaniteit een handje te helpen. De jongens en meisjes die we zien in zijn foto’s zijn gecast, sommigen zijn professioneel model. Dat houdt in dat ze elkaar niet kennen, niet met McGinley noch met elkaar bevriend zijn, en dat ze betaald worden voor die paar weken on the road. Of korter, want soms werd om de week een verse ploeg ingevlogen. Het vastleggen van een ongekunsteld, écht moment duurt soms uren. In een verslag van zo’n reis in 2007 in New York Magazine wordt beschreven wat er zo allemaal meegaat: vier assistenten, een trampoline, een rookmachine, vuurwerk en een boombox. McGinley droeg op de set – want zo praat hij er zelf in diverse interviews over: als een filmset, met een script dat gevolgd wordt en acteurs die daarin hun rollen spelen – een T-shirt met de tekst: Don’t talk to me unless you’re naked. Tot zover het paradijs.
Heilige graal
Nou is McGinley de eerste die toe zal geven dat hij een schijnwereld creëert. In 2007 zei hij tegen The New York Times: „Het is een wereld die niet bestaat, een fantasie. Een leven zoals ik het graag zou willen leven.” Met zijn foto’s uit Celebrating Life suggereert hij echter authenticiteit. Een romantisch idee van een natuur die fundamenteel goed is, met jonge mensen die staan voor oorspronkelijkheid en puurheid. Hij komt daarmee – net zoals veel beeld- en reclamemakers – tegemoet aan ons verlangen naar authenticiteit, de heilige graal van de zoekende moderne mens.
Hoewel zijn paradijs een geconstrueerde werkelijkheid is, appelleert McGinley aan een diep menselijk verlangen. Een verlangen naar jong zijn, vrij zijn, geen zorgen hebben en doen wat je hart je ingeeft. Naar Sturm und Drang en de melancholie van de jaren die naar volwassenheid leiden. Het is dat gevoel dat de foto’s van McGinley zo aantrekkelijk maakt. Niet alleen voor een jong publiek, maar ook voor wie die de twintig allang gepasseerd is.
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