39 Quotes by Ryan McGinley

I’m always interested in an atmosphere where dreams and reality mingle on equal terms.

It’s weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image.

I have a really big family, and pretty much all my work is about my brothers and sisters. I’m the youngest of eight – my mom had seven kids in seven years, and then she had me 11 years later – so I was basically raised by all these teenagers.

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.

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.

Most of the e-mails I get nowadays are from students who ask me how I got my start. In truth its from having a really supportive family but also having a good patron who will help you – like financing all those early trips I took.

I can work with shyness, but for the most part I want people to feel comfortable with me. It’s really more about the photographer feeing comfortable right when they walk in that makes the subject feel comfortable.

I slowly began making a few photos with animals over the years, and I liked how people reacted to them. When I would have the animals on set, I’d notice the way the models would interact with them and there was so much true emotion that you rarely see between two human beings.

My photographs are a celebration of life, fun and the beautiful. They are a world that doesn’t exist. A fantasy. Freedom is real. There are no rules. The life I wish I was living.