Ryan McGinley’s ‘Yearbook’ Brings New Meaning to “Tasteful Nudes”

Ryan McGinley, ‘Paloma E,’ 2015.

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It’s been 10 years since the photographer Ryan McGinley wallpapered the entirety of New York City’s Teams Gallery with nudes (and shut down an entire city block in SoHo in the process). But the interest in his Yearbook series—which features photographs of McGinley’s famous friends and artistic community in various states of undress—has not waned over the course of a decade. Now, the downtown fixture who’s shot everyone from Anya Taylor-Joy to Justin Bieber and Andrew Garfield is releasing his latest iteration of the Yearbook series: a 304-page monograph from Rizzoli. The book contains images of NYC-based artists and creatives, including model Paloma Elsesser, photographer Tyrell Hampton, and musician Mykki Blanco. Taken between January 2009 and December 2019, the photographs depict stars like chef Matty Matheson and Julia Fox in their birthday suits. But there is a sense of autonomy and ownership among the models, who are smiling, laughing, and playing in the images. (One particular picture shows a woman feeding her baby with her right breast while she squeezes milk out of her left, a gleeful, cheeky smile across her face.) Yearbook also features short interviews with many of the models, who discuss their lives and work in the context of Millennial/Gen Z city life. Below, scroll through a sampling of shots from Yearbook.