‘I want to be where the energy’s at’: photographer Ryan McGinley on youth culture, creativity and being collected by Elton John | Photography

Oone night in 2005, during one of his epic group road trips across America, photographer Ryan McGinley pointed his camera at a naked man and woman on the roof of a van in California. “We were watching shooting stars and I was trying to do some long exposures to get something cool,” says McGinley, “but I didn’t have the technical ability, so I just did a point and shoot.”

The attempt to capture the stars may have failed, but the photograph itself, suggesting the tenderness and vulnerability of the lovers before the vast emptiness of space, did not. After the trip, McGinley compiled a journal of recent images to share with friends and people she knew, including Elton John, who showed interest in the photographer’s work. “Elton said, ‘Thank you,’ then five minutes later he gave it back to me. I was like, ‘What?'” McGinley recalled, laughing. “It turned out that he thought the magazine was a catalog for buying pictures. This photo [of the night sky] was fenced and he said, “I want this one.”

It’s one of many McGinley pieces that the musician, who has been collecting photos since the early 1990s, has acquired over the years. They first met in 2003 when McGinley, then one of New York’s hottest young artists known for documenting the joyous excesses of the city’s gay scene, had a solo show at the Whitney titled The Kids Are Alright. The show lit a fuse under McGinley’s career and won him his richest fan base. “Elton just came to the show and looked around and said, ‘I’m going to take this, this, this and this.’

They have remained friends ever since. In addition to buying his work, allowing McGinley to take on more ambitious projects, Elton commissioned him to shoot his 2006 album cover. The Captain and the Kid, and offered support when McGinley got sober nearly 13 years ago. Now Elton and his husband David Furnish are including six of McGinley’s works in a new exhibition of their vast photographic collection, Fragile beautywhich opens this month at the V&A in London.

Of the six photos, all taken between 1999 and 2005, perhaps the most striking shows McGinley and his then-boyfriend having sex in his East Village bedroom, watched by multiple Polaroid portraits. His extreme candor is typical of the photographer’s work, characterized by a deep and often playful intimacy with his subjects.

A string of rosary beads hangs in the corner, a reminder of McGinley’s religious upbringing in New Jersey, where he was the youngest of eight in a conservative Catholic family. Moving to New York to study at Parsons School of Design in the mid-1990s was liberating for the artist, who came out as gay the year before Having sex (Polaroids) was taken, and much of his early work was about “discovering my queerness,” he says.

After the Whitney Show in 2003, McGinley began going off the streets of New York. “I just knew I had to turn around or I’d be a one-trick pony,” he says. His response was to organize month-long road trips across America with friends, usually in groups of 10, so he could photograph bodies in nature. Dakota (Hair), which is included in the V&A exhibition was taken on the first of these trips: it shows a woman in the back of a pick-up truck sipping from a cup while the wind blows her hair. “We never got out of New Jersey when I was younger” , says McGinley, “so I was in California, in the desert, I felt like I was in Kerouac On the road. It was such a special time.”

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McGinley still travels, but on a less epic scale: He might go to Colorado or California for a few weeks to focus on a particular element of the landscape—rocks or trees covered in Spanish moss or sand. (He photographed Brad Pitt in various US national parks for GQ for a 2017 cover) In the last decade, in contrast to the raw spontaneity of his early work, McGinley has been making more composed studio portraits, photographing artists and musicians for advertising and editorial projects, as well as fine art projects. A monograph of his studio work entitled Yearbookwill be published by Rizzoli later this year.

Now 46, McGinley remains fascinated by young people. As well as documenting young bodies, he offers internships and guidance to aspiring photographers – he mentions Quill Lemons, Sandy Kim and Marie Tomanova as three current favourites. For an artist who thrives on youthful energy, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship (and one that mirrors his own with Elton John). “I learn more from the kids now than I did when I was little,” he says. “I always feel like when someone asks me for advice, I get so much information from them — about what their political thoughts are or what’s new that I might not be aware of or just where the energy is — I always want to be there , where there is energy.

• Fragile beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection is at the V&A, London SW7, 18 May – 5 January 2025.