RYAN
Born 1999 / Artist
I sat down with Ryan to talk about his internet persona, Ryan Benjamin, and how he came to fruition growing up in the 00’s and 10’s.
DVW: Gen Z was the first generation to be raised with easy access to the internet and social media. Do you remember finding out what social media was?
RYAN BENJAMIN: I wasn’t allowed to have a phone or anything until my parents got divorced.
DVW: How old were you then?
RYAN BENJAMIN: I was ten so 2010 or so. Our family was very low-tech. I got a cricket phone first, the kind with the paid minutes. It wasn’t until 2012 or 2013 when my mom was like okay, you can get a Facebook. Then an Instagram came maybe a few months after that. My parents were mid divorce [at the time] and it was pretty bad. They were in court for eight years starting in 2010, and it was a long court battle, my dad was fighting for custody [of me and my sister]. It was the same time I was coming to terms with my queerness. I came out in 2013, right around the same time I got an Instagram, and being the only gay person in my school in Florida, I was scared. Lady Gaga was my icon at the time, and there’s this quote of hers, “They can't scare me if I scare them first.”
DVW: Which you really took to heart.
RYAN BENJAMIN: Yeah. So there are these embarrassing old pictures of me on my Instagram. Pictures of me with knives taped to my hands, pictures of me covered in blood. I was putting on this scary persona, I was doing it to scare off the kids in my school. In a way, I was doing drag before I even knew what drag was.
DVW: Wow, that’s kind of genius.
RYAN: But then my dad used the Instagram posts in court to try and get custody of us. The judge had a private meeting with me and my sister. But once the judge looked through everything, they realized I was just a f*ggot.
[MUTUAL LAUGHTER]
DVW: When did your Instagram change into something different?
RYAN: I think when I got into Stephen Klein, he's a fashion photographer. He worked with Lady Gaga a lot, so of course I really liked his style. His photos are very scary, and sometimes problematic though, looking back now, there was stuff I was not aware of… I guess it does seep into my imagery in a way. But at that time, I was using him as inspiration. I think being a young gay kid with no other gay kids around, I wanted to be sexually desired. So in my early posts, I was not ironically using Photoshop. It was an insecurity thing, you know? I think that's how it was for a lot of people.
DVW: Oh, of course, of course. Face tune.
RYAN: But now, I don't do it because I need to do it. I do it because it's a part of the practice. An artistic reason. The character Ryan Benjamin would do that, you know.
DVW: Right. Because your Instagram image, what you project on there is really a different person. A character, a persona.
RYAN: Right. My Instagram is more of a performance piece. Every single post is the character of the body of work that I've been doing for the past eight years, Ryan Benjamin… I had one conversation at a club where a guy came up to me and was like, ‘I really like your art, but you're so arrogant.’ And it really, it gagged me… I sat and thought about that for weeks. And then I was like, ‘I guess I do understand why you would think that if you and I have never had a conversation.’ But that kind of person is actually exactly what I'm making fun of. I guess I'm just doing such a good job making it, that people believe that persona is the real me.
DVW: And how did you come up with your online persona/artist name, Ryan Benjamin?
RYAN: Well Benjamin's my middle name, and I just wanted [redacted], my last name, to not be a part of it. So I made it Ryan Benjamin, and then I don't know, I just wanted something that's separate from me. It's not the name I would call myself at work or on a government document, but its still related to me. Not completely detached, not Cindy Sherman. Ryan Benjamin is drag, a heightened version of me.
DVW: Was there any part of you that chose not to use your government last name because you were worried about the professional or personal consequences?
RYAN: Honestly, no, I so don't give a fuck about that. But I respect people who do. I just wanted something more…
DVW: More c*nty.
RYAN: More c*nty, yeah. But I also didn’t want my dad’s last name, his legacy to live on at all. He’s the only one is his family who had a son, so I would be the one. My sister dropped her last name from everything, too. It feels very Brad Pitt.
DVW: Very Shilo Jolie.
RYAN: And I didn't choose my mom's maiden name because it's Evans. And then I'd be Ryan Evans from High School Musical.
[MUTUAL LAUGHTER]
RYAN: But back to the character, the work. I kind of feel like [the Ryan Benjamin posts] started out as escapism, but they’ve become more of a sort of satire in a way. Sometimes I’m completely mocking things. And sometimes people say satire is bad when you can't tell, but I don't really care if people can tell. Until that guy at the club thought I was arrogant recently, it wasn’t until then that I was like “Oh, maybe it is important for people to know.”
DVW: Well I think finding out is a part of it.
RYAN: Right. I think that once people find out it’s satire, they have the realization that nobody presents themselves online accurately. The character that I do is just a heightened version of that concept, that realization. It makes people think about something often talked about…
DVW: But they come to the conclusion in a unique way, because of the character.
RYAN: Exactly. It’s impossible to be honest online, no one is. That goes into how I feel about images too in general, I don't believe in a photo always being a presentation of "the truth.”
Ryan and his in-progress set.
RYAN: Yes, and I feel like sometimes my work is mistaken as AI. But I don’t use AI in my images. All my sets, everything is handmade because I enjoy the process of it. I guess using AI [in my process could make the work] even darker. Have you heard of the dead internet theory? There are accounts that are being made that only interact with pages that are completely AI. Not a single human being has access to these accounts. So at some point Facebook will be completely overrun by accounts that are only made through AI.
DVW: That's horrifying, it’s like the fear of robots taking over the world manifesting in reality. Do you think AI will be one of those things though, that scares us now, but is normalized in the future? Like cars, cell phones…
RYAN: No. No. AI is so sinister in its creation. It’s just a nightmare. Ultimately though, I do think some good could come out of it. It could bring about the end of capitalism, although it would take away creative jobs first. But it would eventually trickle into everything else as well. AI is going to destroy industry in a very scary way, sort of how SHEIN has. SHEIN is the fastest growing company ever, and AI is going to have a very similar future… But then again, capitalism weaves its way into everything. I feel like marketing is the only way some creatives can get jobs, but I try not to let my craft be touched by the hands of consumerism. I try to not to use my work for ads and things. It’s hard though.
DVW: Well when you’re working in a broken system, sometimes you have to play by broken rules.
RYAN: I just hope AI will be so destructive we have to completely start everything over.
DVW: I'm interested to hear your opinion on people who use AI in their artistic process.
RYAN: I mean, that kind of stuff has been happening for a while already. I don't really, I don't know where to draw the line there. Like I said, I think my work gets mistaken for AI or digital effects [instead of sets] all the time. So I'm used to people thinking that. But it is a very slippery slope. I had this conversation at work where we were like, does AI deserve equal rights?
DVW: [Laughing]
RYAN: But where does it stop? Who is to say… whether or not the intelligence is artificial at a certain point?
DVW: I agree. And I feel like we could go down the AI rabbit hole for hours. It's so limitless. But I do want to talk a bit about the explicit nature of your work. You make images that show your [pauses] “wee wee”, and other [pauses] parts of you… what is the experience posting that work on instagram? I know [instagram] tries to market itself as a family-friendly platform, but also a platform that is very anti-porn, and frankly it’s a platform that is very anti-artist and anti-even things like nipples. Why is Instagram the primary place you go to to show this work?
RYAN: Yes, Instagram is the place that I go to. I think it's still, unfortunately, the only place for artists. It’s where everyone is. It felt much more like the artist platform years ago, when things were less censored. I know a couple of other queer artists who still use Instagram exclusively, and almost every single thing they post gets taken down, whether or not it violates the community guidelines. Which is, I mean, it's fucked up. It just feels more and more like these corporate professionals’ intention is to silence queer voices. I use Twitter too, I have YouTube, so my work is spread across some platforms. Sometimes it's on TikTok too, but I feel like it’s even harder to post my work there.
DVW: How so?
RYAN: I posted a side profile of my naked body. You couldn't see anything. You couldn't even see my butt. And it got my account deleted on TikTok. It's just, it's interesting what these media platforms choose to censor. It's actually not interesting. It's sad. It's clear as day that they're silencing queer people over others, because I get followed by a porn bot every two days on Instagram. And no one seems to care about that.
RYAN: Anyways, I think I started making my images more explicit like halfway through the pandemic. I don't really even know why. I think I was craving some sort of sexual intimacy that I wasn't getting because we were in lockdown. And it was just another way to, I don't know, to show off, but it's become now like, how can I incorporate my d*ck into this work? Even if it makes no sense.
DVW: So you enjoy testing the waters of Instagram, out of spite, or to be contrarian, perhaps.
RYAN: Exactly. That's why I do it the most. And because it's kind of funny to have a serious picture and then your dick out in it. Especially when it's the centerpiece. But so much more of what the work is is putting an effort into making the sets. The sets make the d*ck almost obsolete, because of how much work goes into them. I guess it kind of iconifies it, but also diminishes it in the same way. I have said this for a long time about desensitizing the world to nudity. I think that would help in so many instances. I am a sexual assault survivor. I think it is important for the world to desensitize stuff like that so that it becomes something, one, that people are more comfortable talking about, and two, it’s not this sacred thing that some stranger could take from you.
DVW: I think that's a great thought to end the conversation on.
[TAPE CUT}
You can see Ryan’s work as Ryan Benjamin at @stupidinspace on Instagram, or via his website, ryanbenjaminphotography.com.