Idols Hardcover - 2011

Gilles Larrain was born in Da Lat, Vietnam in 1938 to a diplomat/painter father and a pianist/painter mother. He traveled the world at a young age while growing up in the midst of Jesuit boarding schools in Chile, Argentina, Canada, and France. Gilles attended the Lycée Français in New York and he later attended L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where he studied architecture and city planning. A trip to Oaxaca, Mexico in 1963 to document the sites of Monte Alban and Mitla opened the door to a burgeoning love of photography. Gilles moved back to New York City in 1965 and settled into his artistic life, mixing sculpture, inflatable structures, neon, painting, and photography. He currently resides and continues to make artwork in New York City.

Ryan McGinley is a New York based photographer raised in New Jersey. After moving to New York in 1998, he began extensively photographing his downtown environs. He received a BFA in graphic design from Parsons School of Design in 2000. In 2003, at the age of 25, McGinley was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work has appeared in galleries and museums worldwide, on the covers of magazines and albums, and has
been collected in five monographs, most recently in Life Adjustment Center (Dashwood, 2010).