Ryan McGinley adventure

I remember this moment. I was looking at my mum’s pictures from the past. I was totally enchanted and  focused on them. And then, out of the blue, I asked my dad for his very old SLR camera. It was mysterious  – I was wondering if it still works, after all this years…  

Almost at the same time I discovered American photographer Ryan McGinley. I read about him on some hipster website, authors of this magazine were very much fond of New York. I’ve admiered Ryan’s photos for the half of a day; I was reading interviews with him: legendary stories about riotous city, that never sleeps, but always looks good in the picture. And these photographic fairy-tales about naked people-elfs, about huge American spaces, woods, mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans. Spicy sweetness:  rynamcginley.com. Ryan McGinley: great star of photography from the other side of the world. 

And later, this year, I’ve met Elizabeth. She came from NYC to visit Poland. She keeps a dead, headless, scary beetle in a transparent coffee cup, she collects alligator’ teeth in a wallet. She likes to mess with such a dark stuff. And…it turned out that she’s a friend of Ryan McGinley and that she is his model as well. This year she went with him and a group of other young and beautiful fellows on a journey along the South of USA. They worked on a new photo session. Elizabeth claims that it was an amazing, sometimes a little bit dangerous, kind if punk experience (swimming in a lake with alligators, exploring weird spaces). And that Ryan is very kind, trustworthy, gentile person, who never force people to do something that they don’t like. However, the most important was  work in a group, "one organism". Understanding and trust.  

Elizabeth travels a lot, she’s only 24 but she already went to Alaska, Tahiti, France, Poland and many other parts of the world. She’s an artist, you can check her work here: elizabethjeager.com

Anyway, I hope we will meet each other again. Maybe in New York. I’ve never been there.