
20S x AFP | Ryan McGinley & Quil Lemons in Conversation
$20 Suggested Donation
Ryan McGinley’s photographs captured queer youth at the precipice of ecstasy and vulnerability—his work becoming both mirror and myth. In conversation, we reflect on the power of documenting our people, our lives, our longing. Ryan’s early work offered visibility to a downtown queer New York that felt fleeting and sacred. Together, we trace a lineage of queer image-making and ask: how do we preserve freedom in a frame?
Born on October 17, 1977, in Ramsey, New Jersey, photographer Ryan McGinley is known both for his casual snapshot style and sweeping landscapes. At the age of 25, he became the youngest artist in 30 years to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 2012, Ryan McGinley: Whistle for the Wind, the first large monograph on the artist was released by Rizzoli. His work has been featured in public collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the National Portrait allery in Washington, D.C., among others.
Quil Lemons (b. 1997, South Philadelphia) is a New York-based artist and photographer whose work tenderly reimagines the intersections of Blackness, queerness, masculinity, and kinship. Lemons’ received his B.A from Eugene Lang College at The New School.
His practice is deeply rooted in personal mythology, using the camera to build worlds where softness is a form of resistance and beauty becomes a site of liberation. His images oscillate between the intimate and the iconic, drawing from familial archives, fashion fantasy, and queer futurity to forge a visual language that is at once poetic, political, and defiantly tender.
In 2021, he became the youngest photographer to create the lead image for the cover of Vanity Fair. His work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, Hannah Traore Gallery and internationally across both fine art and editorial platforms. Lemons’ vision is a meditation on care—how we hold one another, how we see ourselves, and how we might be seen anew. He offers not just pictures, but portals.