Agyness Deyn, photograph by Ryan McGinley for Pop Magazine (2008).
The buzz about these photos has been going on since early summer, and everyone’s seen them by now, but I thought I’d put in my two cents. Truth be told, though, now that I sit here to write my little criticism, I’m left with not much to say. I’m ambivalent. McGinley is a photographer I want to love and loathe at once, but he doesn’t inspire the passion in me to do either. I will say this: as an artist, he is a go-getter who has successfully gone and gotten; At this juncture in his career, I think my grandmother could see a Ryan McGinley photo and identify the culprit. But maybe that’s not such a good thing.
There is actually something quite metaphoric about this shoot. It gives me the feeling that both he and Deyn reached the apogee of their respective careers some time ago and that this ham-fisted collaboration is just a benchmark in the speedy descent into irrelevance.
