![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/76d46c1186bece970f9de43d535f60e802-Bethesda-Fountain-Central-Park.rhorizontal.w1100.jpg\")
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\n Ryan McGinley, Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, 2026.
\n Photo: Ryan McGinley\n <\/p>\n
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. \u201cIt was so beautiful,\u201d says McGinley. \u201cNew Yorkers don\u2019t bat an eye. They\u2019re like, \u2018Another day in New York. Let me just keep playing my music.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
A picture from that evening is part of a body of work on view at Jeffrey Deitch\u2019s Wooster Street gallery starting June 13. \u201cNight Shift,\u201d which depicts nude figures horsing around quiet streets like they\u2019re in the world\u2019s largest, emptiest playground, is McGinley\u2019s first solo show in town since 2018: \u201cThe city really felt like it was ours.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibition recalls the images that made McGinley famous back in the early aughts, when he documented the hedonistic life of friends like Dash Snow and Kunle Martins. His visual diary of this darkly glamorous subculture resulted in a provocative solo exhibition at the Whitney in 2003, when McGinley was only 25. For over a decade, he crisscrossed the country, producing a famous series of images featuring lithe nude models leaping and dancing through the wilderness. \u201cNight Shift\u201d is a homecoming. \u201cWe covered all five boroughs,\u201d he says. \u201cEven Staten Island.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGinley and his models shot Sunday through Tuesday from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., the sort of hours that are now rare for the 48-year-old. \u201cIt\u2019s so hard, especially if you\u2019re not doing it consistently,\u201d he says. The schedule was necessary to avoid running into trouble. They only had one close call with the police, shooting outside a car wash on the West Side Highway. \u201cThey got on their loudspeaker and were like, \u2018You call this art?\u2019\u201d McGinley says.<\/p>\n
Hudson River, Manhattan, 2026.<\/p>\n
Long Island City Train Yard, Queens, 2026.<\/p>\n
Lincoln Center, Manhattan, 2026.<\/p>\n
West Side Highway, Manhattan, 2026.<\/p>\n
\n Photographs by Ryan McGinley\n <\/p>\n
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\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the June 1, 2026, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n