This
body of work — a significant addition to the legacy of American subculture photography forged by the likes of Peter Hujar, David Wojnarwicz, Philip - Lorca diCorcia and Nan Goldin — is characterized by McGinley's idiosyncratic admixture of hopefulness and self - awareness, as well as his unembarrassed disclosure of the melodrama of youth, its inextricably
intertwined joy and heartbreak: the artist shows us his debauched, frequently
naked friends, laughing and weeping, taking drugs and having sex, tagging walls and pissing off roofs.
Throughout the gallery we also see paintings of women
intertwined with lovers or alone, or even lying
naked next to a lover in an attempt to reimagine ``... the nude without objectifying the person, of using a specific
body rather than an idealized form.»