From June 13th to August 8th, 2026, Jeffrey Deitch New York presents Night Shift, a new and compelling chapter in Ryan McGinley’s photographic practice. Created across all five boroughs between spring and winter 2025, the series captures New York between the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., when the city slips into a different rhythm.
Drawing on the restless energy and freedom that shaped his early work, McGinley turns his lens toward a city cloaked in darkness. The resulting photographs feel intimate yet cinematic, charged with movement, longing, and urban folklore.
A journey through New York’s hidden landscapes
Using slow shutter speeds, long lenses, and radio flash, McGinley renders familiar streets strangely luminous. Neon signs, traffic lights, and streetlamps dissolve into radiant halos of colour, while figures drift through the frame like fleeting apparitions.
The series moves through Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, tracing locations of personal significance: weathered piers, railway lines, industrial relics, smoke-filled streets, and graveyards overlooking the skyline.
As McGinley describes it, Night Shift is “a poem to New York City,” capturing moments when the city’s relentless pulse briefly softens into possibility.
Ryan McGinley photography captures city after dark
Balancing observation with reverie, the photographs chart the city across changing seasons. Cherry blossoms emerge through cracked pavement, fire hydrants drench summer streets near Yankee Stadium, and winter light settles across empty avenues.
Landmarks such as the K Bridge, Fort Greene Park, Lincoln Center, Bethesda Fountain’s Angel of the Waters, and Coney Island’s Cyclone appear throughout the series. Equally significant are the everyday details—bodegas, bicycles, sanitation trucks, and stairwells—that give New York its singular character.
With Night Shift, McGinley casts the city as a nocturnal theatre where light, architecture, and human presence collide, offering a fresh portrait of the place that continues to shape his life and work.
Photography courtesy of RYAN MCGINLEY and JEFFREY DEITCH
