Naturally Inspired

Over the past year, Ryan McGinley and his crew explored huge underground caves, venturing into unknown territory and seeking out spectacular natural spaces, some previously undocumented.

The title, “Moonmilk”, alludes to the crystalline deposits found on the walls of many caves; it was once believed that this substance was formed by light from celestial bodies passing through rock into darkened worlds below.

The series, a departure from Ryan’s iconic images of the past, firmly places Ryan as one of the most innovative and influential artists of a generation.

McGinley rejected working in commercial caves, focusing instead on what are commonly referred to as “Wild Caves.” Some of the terminology applied to explorers and other kinds of pioneers can be applied to McGinley and his work process: trailblazer, pathfinder, seeker, searcher, frontiersman, surveyor. For the cave photographs, McGinley plunged himself, his models, and his crew into an awesome and impenetrable blackness and brought back evidence from the hidden realm; pictures from inside the earth.