The irony of Ryan McGinley’s “Go Forth” campaign for Levi’s became all too clear to me on the corner of 53rd and Madison one afternoon last week: “What does work have to do with McGinley’s Good Times Gang?” I thought to myself, watching the suits standing on line for cheap lunchtime street meat while waiting out the green light. As with his brow-raising 2008 “We are Animals” campaign for Wrangler—do you generally associate the Wrangler brand with comely models draped in dripping wet denim?—McGinley’s recent work for Levi’s draws heavily on his personal practice as a roadtripping photographer whose band of nubile friends seem impervious to the psychic weight of adulthood. In the “Go Forth” series, however, the sense of wonderlust that led Levi Strauss to San Francisco and eventually help define his brand reads here less as an exercise in Manifest Destiny than a Journey to Nowhere. Chalk it up to “the times,” I guess.
