The Arresting World

By: Interview by Jamie Brisick | Ryan McGinley | February 10, 2010 | Profile

Is there an image of yours that is your all-time favorite?
People always ask me that, and I always say they’re all my children and I love them all equally. But I do love when people tell me what their favorite photo of mine is because it’s always so different and so shocking to me. Like I can never guess who’s going to like what. There’s never just one photo that everyone picks as their favorite. It makes me happy.

Tell us a bit about the titles of your pictures.
I try to stay simple, like as if they were file names on my computer. It’s usually the person and the color, location or activity, and that’s it. Once in awhile I like to have fun with the names. The Moonmilk series was fun to name because of all the colors. It was like naming nail polishes.

What are you working on at the moment?
I’m having a solo show in Greece in January at the Breeder gallery, and then I’m going to have a show at Team Gallery in New York in March. I’m also making a film for Destricted, which is a group of short art films dealing with sexuality, curated by Neville Wakefield, that includes other films by artists like Larry Clark and Matthew Barney.

This past year, I started working on a series of black-and-white nude studio portraits. It’s interesting to try and find my voice in that space, just using a white wall and a nude body. It’s another new way to challenge myself, and I think it’s important for an artist to keep doing different things.

But I basically spent the last two years in caves, so I plan on spending a lot of time this winter watching movies and looking at art books and getting inspired. I love to go to the New York Public Library to research children’s books. I sit on the floor with my digital camera and take photos of the drawings that inspire me. A lot of my photos are based on children’s actions — running, jumping, screaming, falling and just being free and not self-conscious — optimistic in a way that, unfortunately, you lose a lot of when you grow up. I like to capture that natural freedom and energy in my photos.

And then on the non-photographic, more personal front:

Daily routine?
If I’m not traveling, I wake up, eat a bowl of Kashi whole grain cereal with almond milk, make a cup of fresh mint or jasmine tea, water my plants, take a bath, do yoga, check my eBay alerts, look at some blogs, log on to iChat and edit photos for hours on end. At night, I like to go to Takahachi, my favorite sushi restaurant in the East Village, and then to a movie. I’ll see almost anything; I’m not picky.

Most valued possession?
I’m always traveling either on airplanes or in a van full of people, so I need three things: a sleeping mask, earplugs and a pill bottle full of sedatives. Those are priceless possessions to me when I’m traveling. And then also my bike. My bike gives me absolute freedom. It’s the freest you can be in the city; you don’t have to stop at stoplights or anything. I like to see if I can get to where I’m going without ever having to stop once.

What are your interests outside of photography?
I like to collect plants. I have lots of cactuses that I take care of. I like crystals; I have little crystals all over my apartment. I like bedding. If I wasn’t a photographer I think I would design bed sheets and pillowcases. I’ve been collecting Batman shirts recently and evil eyes. They ward off evil spirits, and I like the idea of one eye, like looking through a camera lens. I have a big library of rare art books, too. I’m a big collector of stuff.

What have you been listening to?
My all time favorites are Belle and Sebastian, Morrissey, Cat Power, Neil Young and The Virgins. Right now I’m obsessed with the song “Hideaway” by Karen O from the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack. Music plays a very important part of my life. All my photos have a soundtrack. It’s actually someone’s job on my shoots to keep the music going for whatever vibe we are feeling. I also go to a lot of music festivals, and one of my favorite things to do is to go into the audience and take photos of fans freaking out to rock ’n’ roll.

What does Morrissey mean to you?
Well, in high school it meant being an outsider. We were in a poetry club and went to PETA marches and wore Quadrophenia jackets and 24-hole Doc Martens and tight pants. It was part of being “alternative.” As a teenager I could relate to his lyrics; it often felt like he was singing to me. Now that I’m older, I may think stuff like “I wear black on the outside ’cause black is how I feel on the inside” is silly, but I still think there’s a romance in the sadness. Plus I just like crooning.

And finally, if you could make love to any person, living or dead, who would it be?
In their heyday — David Bowie, Johnny Rotten, Willem Dafoe, Jeremy Irons, Clint Eastwood and Sam Shepard.

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