The Fantasy World of Ryan McGinleyDoes photography's hot young thing deserve all the hype?

Remarks from the Fray:

Is it all just hype? Come on! You can't create an explosion of interest and reaction like that just by hype. Look at the photgraphs. The guy has struck a vein that has struck a nerve. Hello? The real question is "Why has this happened?".

Every generation has a few artists that just burst out of the gates. They seldom represent pan flashes but are generally just what they seem to be: major zeitgeist manifestations.

--mstrschld

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The author's question was "is he worth the hype?" Well, which hype? McGinley gives us these images of his ideal existence, and the commercial photography market loves them. Nothing wrong with that - they sell photos (with ad copy, or next to features, or wherever), or lifestyle images, and they like these and think that their paying customers will like them too. Paris Hilton and Rage Boy are examples of the same behavior by their respective media outlets. And I'll bet they're all "worth the hype" in that the coverage results in more revenue for their media outlets than the alternatives.

On the other hand, as art goes, he's more a piece than a maker. McGinley's fantasy life is artistically interesting, and his photos are artifacts of that fantasy life, but there's no development of photographic or compositional technique going on here. His shots belong in the time capsule after the Benetton ads, maybe next to the A&F ads - or maybe the A&F ads are better examples of American fantasia than his pictures. To the extent that he is hyped in the art world (and I wouldn't know either way), it's a case of mistaken identity combined with a desire to claim his success for the nearest artistic "genre." To call back an old Slate piece, McGinley strikes me as what Bryan Curtis would call a "Dane Cook type of photographer."

--reopines

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I was born the same year as McGinley, and don't particularly recognize his fantasy world as representing anything I would want said by some "voice of my generation". I know that media worry-warts like to complain about how today's late-20's, early-30's singles are permanent children (my god, they still play video games, and like being silly just for the heck of it!) but is there supposed to be some transformation, on the way to adulthood, that causes you to take on the idiotic view that people a generation younger than you are inherently a uniform, homogenous mass, rather than a group of diverse individuals with many opinions and ideas?

If so, thank god all us young'uns are stuck in permanent adolescence.

--auros

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I am a photographer and photojournalist who has worked in a variety of print and online media and also exhibited fine-art photography in solo and group shows. My undergraduate and graduate-level training includes studies at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Academy of Art College, SFSU, and RISD. Therefore, to an extent I should know whereof I speak.

McGinley's work doesn't define a generation: very little art can encompass something so broad. Nor do I think the term "hipster" should even be brought to the table here. Slate is in general a very good news/op-ed outlet but I cringe when their writers must use terms like "hipster": these kids are my generation and look like people I know, work with, and party with. If they wore Nike running shoes (no, not the retro ones either) instead of Converse would they be hipsters? If they rode really tech mountain bikes instead of old-skool bikes would they? Please don't try so hard to seem . . . so 2002. Ok? Ok.

What I see Ryan McGinley as doing of lasting merit is two-fold: 1, he has brought nudity into corporate advertising at a higher and more open level than it has conventionally (even in recent years) been used. 2, he treats male and female frontal nudity in equal terms and no longer do we see women as sex objects via nude work because he treats male models along the same lines. While there is an erotic aspect to his work, it's more about freedom to be nude in such situations and the confidence in being photographed as such over a gaze directed expressly at the nude body. I remember as a kid in the later 1980s and early 1990s I saw many R-rated films, magazine ads, and yes even fine-art photography that was mainly focused at female nudity. Larry Clark and later Anthony Goicolea were central in looking at nudity or even sexuality in a different light for my generation of photographers. Yes, Nan Goldin mattered too, but in a different way. Ryan McGinley isn't breaking that kind of ground but he's putting forth some really interesting and pleasing work.

--cloud

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