All the Little Houses: May 2014

As I've said before (here and here), Ryan McGinley’s photographs were made for high summer, and I’m a little premature in posting some of his new work here at the beginning of May. I couldn't resist though. The photographs are deliciously warm and wonderfully dark, and they remind me of adventures from my college years (only more naked!).

While I definitely prefer his older work (images from around 2001-2007), the newer pictures seduce with lurid color and impossible compositions. McGinley’s subject matter and aesthetic are consistently surreal (they're part of the language he's working in), but the earlier images seem to come forward from a softer dream space while the newer work delights in and lingers with the very frenzy of elements that formed it.

I'll leave you with a snippet from his 2012 interview with Bill Powers:

Photography is limited, but it’s also limitless. You can put anything in front of your camera as long as you have a strong language. Photographs let you reinvent your self in another way. I can build my own pseudo-reality in photography. Since it’s a photo, it really happened and people will always respond to that. Like any good artist you just have to have a consistency of vision. I’d like to think I’m bringing poetry to the adventure of outdoor photography. Why I became of photographer is to observe the human spirit, to be a radical explorer, to join the circus and run away from home.