NSFW Ryan McGinley Portrait Exhibit  March 19, 2010

New York photographer Ryan McGinley's latest collection of images is a departure from his usual Sam Haskins-esque beautiful-young-nudes-cavorting-through-the-wilderness landscapes and the celebrity-heavy commissioned endeavors he's been busy with for various fashion houses and media giants.

Rather, the exhibition "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere" is a more intimate series of black and white portraits, for which he used 150 different models shot against a basic white backdrop. McGinley is a photographer whose work we - along with countless other publications - regularly post about because, over the past few years, he has definitely assumed the role of 'The Emperor's New Photographer' after working with a lot of cool "indie" cultural touchstones in human form - artist Dash Snow, Larry Clark, Tilda Swinton.

Whether he's as artistically relevant as his media coverage would suggest is anyone's guess - and whether you would put McGinley in the same well-connected "it" photographer category as a Terry Richardson (albeit with less sexual-creep allegations) is another question to contemplate. Like most artists in history, time will be the deciding factor on answering that question.

Regardless, his latest collection that opens this week at Team Gallery on New York's Lower East Side, is an interesting step outside his dreamy, outdoorsy oeuvre and stripping (ahem) back the whimsy to make some straight-up (though clearly retouched) camera-in-the-face portraits - as the name of the collection would suggest.

And to fans of McGinley's previous work, don't worry: everyone's still naked.

All images by Ryan McGinley

Main image byJack Siegel