“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.”
—Ryan McGinley
Ryan McGinley’s You and My Friends 2 is an homage to the collective experience of contemporary cultural events. Comprised of 12 vividly colored close-up portraits, the photographs were taken at music festivals across the United States and Europe, then combined together as an oversized grid. While Andreas Gursky’s monumental May Day images document a similar scene, McGinley’s distinct approach isolates individuals within the crowd, capturing them in an array of emotions from quiet reflection to unbridled enthusiasm. The editorial aesthetic of his work, enhanced by the colors reflected from the stage, belies the documentary nature of the images resulting in photographs that hover between reality and fiction. McGinley’s photographs have come to represent the aspirations of a generation where freedom, joy and individuality reign supreme.