Ryan McGinley spent a good chunk of last year photographing friends on the graveyard shift. In late August, he was in Central Park around midnight as three of his subjects stripped naked and splashed in Bethesda Fountain. As McGinley snapped away with a long lens, his strobe illuminating the fountain, a man emerged with a violin. “It was so beautiful,” says McGinley. “New Yorkers don’t bat an eye. They’re like, ‘Another day in New York. Let me just keep playing my music.’”
A picture from that evening is part of a body of work on view at Jeffrey Deitch’s Wooster Street gallery starting June 13. “Night Shift,” which depicts nude figures horsing around quiet streets like they’re in the world’s largest, emptiest playground, is McGinley’s first solo show in town since 2018: “The city really felt like it was ours.”
