ภาพของ McGinley มีเสน่ห์มาก สด (Gus Van Sant ใช้คำว่า innocence) และแฟนตาซี หนังสือมีบทความเล็ก ๆ ประกอบ 3 ชิ้น (1) Mobile Devices ของ John Kelsey อ่านถอดใจความออกมายากเกิน บ่นไรไม่รู้ nude naked sex joy AIDS ..., (2) Barn Crash เป็นบทสนทนาระหว่าง Gus Van Sant กับ Ryan McGinley ช่วงนี้น่าสนใจครับ ดูตัวอย่าง 1 กับ 2 ด้านล่าง และบทความชิ้นสุดท้ายเป็นบทที่แนะนำให้เรารู้จักงานของช่างภาพคนนี้แบบกระชับดี (3) Pseudo-Fiction, Myth, and Contingency ผ่านการวิจารณ์ของ Cris Kraus
ตัวอย่าง 1. บทสนทนาระหว่าง Gus Van Sant กับ Ryan McGinley ช่วงนี้น่าสนใจมาก
GVS "Well, it's like how Orson Welles (ทั้งกำกับ ผลิต แล้วก็เล่นเองใน Citizen Kane) couldn't beat Citizen Kane because it was the new thing. It's the clarity with which you're thinking:
You're not worried about what you're shooting. The reason your photographs were celebrated was because they were innocent. You weren't taking them so that you could put them in the Whitney (หมายถึง Whitney Museum of American Art), you were taking them on your own, for your own reasons. You were practicing photography, but you were working without the legitimacy of the system. After you're accepted by the system, then all of a sudden it changes everything, and you kind of can't get back to that innocence and clarity. I think every artist has that happen to them, and how they deal with it is kind of interesting. I mean, if you're John Waters today, would be conceivably take $20,000 and go make a film like Pink Flamingos? He could but there's something that makes it so you can't. And some artists actually do that, they try to retrace their steps, and it's difficult. And there are some artists that escape the whole thing, and they're made into an icon, like George Kuchar. He never seemed to care whether or not be became accepted by the established Hollywood scene. It was beside the point for him. He was working very hard, and he was making all these amazing things and influencing all these people, but he never had to worry about his art because it was always operating under its own terms. There are a lot of artists like that. I don't think that I'm one of those artists.
RM "I remember at one point when I was on the set of Milk with you, we were talking about art and photography and film making, and you said to me, "Well, I want to do what you do." And I said, "Well, I want to do what you do."
ตัวอย่าง 2. A lot of people ask me if I'm going to continue photographing young people as I get older. It's a hard question for me to answer because, well, I don't know. Maybe. I feel like youth is what I'm most interested in because it's a time in your life when there's so many possibilities and so much confusion and anger and optimism, and it's all wrapped up together. Ryan McGinley