Ryan McGinley quotes:

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.

Just having the camera, being able to pull back from situations and be an observer, it saved my life... I realised I could find these intimate moments and that people trusted me. That, basically, my camera was magic.

I went through a pretty big David Bowie period when I was younger, and that has affected me profoundly in my life and my work.

Everyone I'm photographing, I feel like I'm remaking a family, in a way. My brothers and sisters are my heroes. So many of my models resemble them.

All I do is make photos. It's my life.

I'm interested in reaching the masses with my work. It's one of my goals.

I have a really big family, and pretty much all my work is about my brothers and sisters. I'm the youngest of eight - my mom had seven kids in seven years, and then she had me 11 years later - so I was basically raised by all these teenagers.

I can work with shyness, but for the most part I want people to feel comfortable with me. It's really more about the photographer feeing comfortable right when they walk in that makes the subject feel comfortable.

I couldn't wait to come to New York to reinvent myself.

You have to be able to observe life as if you were a camera all the time, constantly looking at light and the way that things are placed and the way people hold themselves. You need the ability to see something in someone or something that no one else really sees and be able to bring that to light. Basically, you have to be an obsessive crazy person.

I don't want to be an artist that gets stuck doing one thing. I don't want to be an artist who people look back at and say, 'His early work was really great.'

I think that's an important lesson for young people who want to be artists: You have to find someone who believes in you and who will help you find that time where you don't have to think about a job but just making work. If I didn't have those people in my life, I wouldn't be in the position I'm in.

I'm always interested in an atmosphere where dreams and reality mingle on equal terms.

Most of the e-mails I get nowadays are from students who ask me how I got my start. In truth its from having a really supportive family but also having a good patron who will help you - like financing all those early trips I took.

All my work, really, is based on my brothers and sisters. I had so many adventures with them and a big part of the work is to recreate those. It's easy for me to be around a lot of people, because I can retreat. I can watch everything.

I'm making the art for me first. I'm making it because these are the pictures I want to see. I'm making pictures that don't yet exist.

A lot of my close friends have committed suicide or died of heroin overdoses.

Actually, I didn't study photography at first. I went to school for painting my first year, poetry my second year, graphic design my third and fourth year, and photography my fifth.

It's weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image.

I have absolutely no interest in creating depressing images.

Most of the e-mails I get nowadays are from students who ask me how I got my start. In truth it's from having a really supportive family but also having a good patron who will help you - like financing all those early trips I took.

I'm just a photographer, not a movie star.

From 8 to 19, I was skateboarding every single day. That was my life. I worked at a skate shop. I watched skate videos.

I slowly began making a few photos with animals over the years, and I liked how people reacted to them. When I would have the animals on set, I'd notice the way the models would interact with them and there was so much true emotion that you rarely see between two human beings.

A camera gives you a purpose.

A lot of artists need structure.

A lot of people, even my parents, thought, "Art school, I don't know. We'll support you but the success rate for artists is really slim."

Everyone started to have a camera. That's when I started to travel outside of New York and go into nature.

Growing up, my room was covered in posters. I was like, "I want to make posters."

I didn't have much of a life in crime as a graffiti writer.

I didn't have to be friends with people who were into pop music.

I don't want to be an artist that gets stuck doing one thing. I don't want to be an artist who people look back at and say, 'His early work was really great.

I just remember how excited I was to have a boyfriend and be in love and to document it.

I knew my ticket out of the suburbs was art school, so I worked really hard to develop my portfolio and get a scholarship.

I know that my mind is so A.D.D., and I want instant gratification - and photography can provide me with that - but at some point, I want to make an independent feature.

I put all of my time into art because I couldn't go back to Jersey and work at Starbucks.

I spent all of my money on film. I remember I would do these set-design jobs or transcribe or just anything to get, like, a $100 check and go immediately to Adorama and buy expired film.

I think a lot about control nowadays, and I really want to let go and just be more in the moment.

I think the driving force when I moved to New York was the fear of going home with my tail between my legs.

I want to venture into film more, and I think that a nice way to transition into doing that would be a documentary. I think it would be interesting to find one person that really fascinated me or maybe a band and travel with them, but I don't think I could do it like I used to do it.

I was growing up in the suburbs; I was one of eight kids. So I did have a community when I was younger, but all of my brothers and sisters were older.

I was never raised with anybody telling me that gay was bad.

I was never told, "Fags are going to hell." You just didn't talk about it.

I was pretty Irish Catholic Jersey, the middle of the line.

I was studying graphic design at the time, when negative scanners and all that stuff was coming out, and you could do it all in your apartment. So I would shoot, make contact sheets, scan all the cool negatives, and make all these zines and books of my photos to give to my friends. I was really into zine- and bookmaking from skate culture.

I was voted most artistic in school.

I'm going to put every aspect of myself out into the world and try to convey it through photography.

I'm not going to hide behind anything.

In a lot of ways I look at these old photos, and I don't know if I would have been able to communicate with these people on this level if I didn't have a camera. I think I would still be so shy.

In college, all my friends were graffiti writers, but I never wrote graffiti. I wanted to participate and do something cool on the street, so I'd make these portraits of people. I'd isolate them on a white wall, make a silkscreen of it, and do these portraits in bathrooms and all around. That's how I started the Polaroids.

I've been attracted to Kate Moss since I was a teenager.

Just being friends with people now for over 15 years, you realize what we all came out of. What we came out of was the intense feeling of growing up. It sounds kind of cliché, but it's true.

My dad was in the Korean War. He got shot seven times. He had seven bullet holes in him. And out of his troop of 35 guys, he was one of nine guys that came back. And when he came back from that he had seven kids in seven years.

My mom had seven kids in seven years, and then she had me 11 years later. So when I was born, my oldest brother was 18. And my youngest brother was 11. By the time I was 7 or 8, everyone had moved out. I went from being with ten people all the time to being an only child. It really freaked me out.

The camera gives you some control.

The cool part about New York is that you can do that. You can talk to all the people you admire.

The cool thing for me about moving to New York was that I got to create a new family.

The thing about being a photographer that's so cool is that you get to participate, but you also get to disappear. The camera is in front of your face all the time.

There was no luxury. I never got on an airplane until I was 18. We drove everywhere. My dad was like, "Waste not, want not."

What I really believe is that there are no coincidences anymore.

Whatever emotions you're going through, you somehow seek out the people that are going through similar emotions or that maybe have something you need.

When I moved to New York, I was still in the closet.

When I was in art school, the photo kids were separated from the rest. If you did sculpture or painting or graphic design, you were all taking the same classes, but the photographers just went straight into photography.

You find the people that you need to find. There's this gravitational pull.