CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/4/2015

The Open Road

"I have absolutely no interest in creating depressing images," Ryan McGinley is quoted in The Open Road, Aperture's quintessential book of American road trip photography. Perhaps this is why he is widely considered the photographic voice of his generation. Of the series, The Journey Is the Destination, which includes "Genie" (2014), featured here, author David Campany writes, "Many commentators have likened McGinley's work to the diaristic photography of Nan Goldin and Larry Clark. While his images lack their pain and hardship, Hollywood has taught us that any scene of youthful, bucolic bliss tends to presage something ominous. Likewise, any art that is so relentlessly upbeat inevitably has the inverse effect. Beauty slips into 'beauty,' fun into 'fun,' nudity into 'nudity.' Whatever the unspoken cause, it seems to haunt McGinley's photographs. Sometimes it's the vague melancholy of perfect summers past, but there is looming unrest as well. Its absence from the frame only serves to amplify it."