As a teenager, McGinley was a snowboard instructor at Campgaw Mountain, New Jersey and competed in the east coast amateur circuits from 1992 to 1995.
One copy of The Kids Are Alright was given to scholar and curator Sylvia Wolf, who later organized McGinley's solo exhibition at the Whitney.
McGinley has been long time friends with fellow Lower Manhattan artists Dan Colen and the late Dash Snow.
"[9] Ariel Levy, writing in New York magazine about McGinley's friend and collaborator, Snow, said, "People fall in love with McGinleyʼs work because it tells a story about liberation and hedonism: Where Goldin and Larry Clark were saying something painful and anxiety producing about Kids and what happens when they take drugs and have sex in an ungoverned urban underworld, McGinley started out announcing that 'The Kids Are Alright,' fantastic, really, and suggested that a gleeful, unfettered subculture was just around the corner—'still'—if only you knew where to look.
'"[8] The transition to creating work with an emphasis on heavy pre-production is embodied in McGinley's famous summer cross-country road trip series.
"[13] As McGinley continued the series, he began incorporating different elements into his photos, such as shooting with fireworks, animals, and in extreme locations like caves.
It was also the beginning of what became by 2010, an all entirely digital photography practice, his 2010 exhibition, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, at Team Gallery in NYC, where he displayed his first collection of black and white nudes.
The installation's effect is hugely impressive in its standalone visual power, an enveloping entity flooding the entire space with bold color and form.
Influenced by the death of his brother in 1995 due to HIV/AIDS-related complications, McGinley is vocally passionate about raising funds for HIV/AIDS awareness and treatment research.
At the 2014 amfAR Gala, a photograph donated by McGinley was purchased by Miley Cyrus, who narrowly outbid Tom Ford, for a record breaking price.
[17] Also in 2014 McGinley photographed Ines Rau, a transgender person, fully nude for a spread in Playboy magazine called "Evolution.
"[18] In recent years, McGinley has become well known for the circle of successful younger artists surrounding him and his studio, prompting the New York Times to refer to him as, "The Pied Piper of the Downtown Art World".
"[21] He continued, "I once heard the legendary indie director Derek Jarman had three rules for making his art films: 'Show up early, hold your own light, and don’t expect to get paid.'
McGinley is credited for the formation of the New York City based band The Virgins after introducing and photographing two of its members in Tulum in 2004.
"[24] In 2008, the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós used one of McGinley's images for their fifth album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust.
Additionally, he has made photographs for beauty and fragrance campaigns by Calvin Klein, Dior, Hermès, and Stella McCartney.
[45] Art critic David Velasco, in his review of the show, wrote, "McGinley went on a two-year road trip, traveling to dozens of Morrissey concerts in the US, the UK, and Mexico.
The resultant photos, many of which are densely saturated in the concerts’ colored lights, feature candid shots of fans, regularly zooming in for seductive close-ups of enamored youngsters—a celebration of the ecstatic cult of fame and its ardent enablers.
In that collection, McGinley's troupe travels the country as he photographs them, sometimes clothed and often not, while they leap fences, lounge in a desert, play together in a tree.
A collection of hundreds of colorful studio portraits but conceived as a single artwork, the installation covered every available inch of the walls of San Francisco's Ratio 3.
[55] In 2015, McGinley's work further departed from his summer road trip series with bicoastal exhibitions Fall[56] and Winter,[57] at Team Gallery's SoHo and Venice Beach locations.
The show was described as "an expansive view of the new paradigms for storytelling forged during the past ten years to communicate ideas about race, gender, sexuality, history, and politics, among other trenchant themes.