A profile of photographer Ryan McGinley, whose work has influenced advertising, film, music videos, and Instagram:
One of McGinley’s portraits of McChesney—taken in the bathroom of a gay club into which he dragged a mini trampoline for her to bounce naked on—was used as the lead image for his Whitney show. In it, Lizzy is caught in midair, feet a blur, mouth caught in the earliest milliseconds of a smile. The background is bisected at her torso—from the waist down, it’s all graffıti, but from the waist up, it’s a celestial mural. Her head pops up between two spacecrafts; her breasts—obscured by her own wrist—look to be about Saturn-sized. Twelve years later, it’s still one of McGinley’s most collectable photographs. José Freire calls it “one of the most beautifully optimistic things you’ll ever see.”
