Philip-Lorca diCorcia
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Philip-Lorca diCorcia (born 1951) is an American
photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...
, living in New York City. He teaches at
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
in
New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...
, Connecticut.Release: David Zwirner - Philip-Lorca diCorcia: ''Thousand'' (February 27 - March 28, 2009). Retrieved on May 20-200
(PDF)
.


Early life and education

DiCorcia was born in 1951 in
Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...
. His father, Philip Joseph DiCorcia, a major architect in Hartford, operated Philip J. DiCorcia Associates. The DiCorcia family is of Italian descent, having moved to the United States from
Abruzzo Abruzzo (, , ; nap, label=Neapolitan language, Abruzzese Neapolitan, Abbrùzze , ''Abbrìzze'' or ''Abbrèzze'' ; nap, label=Sabino dialect, Aquilano, Abbrùzzu; #History, historically Abruzzi) is a Regions of Italy, region of Southern Italy wi ...
. He attended the
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (Museum School, SMFA at Tufts, or SMFA; formerly the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is the art school of Tufts University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusett ...
, where he earned a diploma in 1975 and a 5th year certificate in 1976. Afterwards diCorcia attended Yale University, where he received a
Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...
in photography in 1979.


Work

DiCorcia alternates between informal snapshots and iconic quality staged compositions that often have a
baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
theatricality.Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
Retrieved on November 23-2007.
Using a carefully planned staging, he takes everyday occurrences beyond the realm of banality, trying to inspire in his picture's spectators an awareness of the psychology and emotion contained in real-life situations.Carnegie International - Artist Bio.
Retrieved on November 23-2007.
His work could be described as
documentary photography Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle events or environments both significant and relevant to history and historical events as well as everyday life. It is typically undertaken as professional pho ...
mixed with the fictional world of cinema and advertising, which creates a powerful link between reality, fantasy and desire. During the late 1970s, during diCorcia's early career, he used to situate his friends and family within fictional interior tableaus, that would make the viewer think that the pictures were spontaneous shots of someone's everyday life, when they were in fact carefully staged and pre-planned. His work from this period is associated with the Boston School of photography. He would later start photographing random people in urban spaces all around the world. When in Berlin, Calcutta, Hollywood, New York, Rome and Tokyo, he would often hide lights in the pavement, which would illuminate a random subject, often isolating them from the other people in the street. His photographs give a sense of heightened drama to accidental poses, unintended movements and insignificant facial expressions of those passing by.Philip-Lorca diCorcia: Streetwork
Retrieved on November 23-2007.
Even if sometimes the subject appears to be completely detached from the world around them, diCorcia has often used the city of the subject's name as the title of the photo, placing the passers-by back into the city's anonymity. Each of his series, ''Hustlers'', ''Streetwork'', ''Heads'', ''A Storybook Life'', and ''Lucky Thirteen'', can be considered progressive explorations of diCorcia's formal and conceptual fields of interest. Besides his family, associates and random people he has also photographed personas already theatrically enlarged by their life choices, such as the pole dancers in his latest series. His pictures have
black humor Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discus ...
within them, and have been described as "
Rorschach Rorschach may refer to: * Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist ** Rorschach test, his psychological evaluation method involving inkblots * Rorschach (character), a character from the comics ''Watchmen'' * Rorschach (comic book), a 2020 comic * ...
-like", since they can have a different interpretation depending on the viewer. As they are pre-planned, diCorcia often plants in his concepts issues like the marketing of reality, the commodification of identity, art, and morality. In 1989, financed by a
National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...
fellowship of $45,000, DiCorcia began his ''Hustlers'' project. Starting in the early 1990s, he made five trips to Los Angeles to photograph male prostitutes in Hollywood. He used a 6×9
Linhof Linhof is a German company, founded in Munich in 1887 by Valentin Linhof. The company is well known for making premium rollfilm and large format film cameras. Linhof initially focused on making camera shutters and developing the first leaf shu ...
view camera A view camera is a large-format camera in which the lens forms an inverted image on a ground-glass screen directly at the film plane. The image is viewed and then the glass screen is replaced with the film, and thus the film is exposed to exact ...
, which he positioned in advance with
Polaroid Polaroid may refer to: * Polaroid Corporation, an American company known for its instant film and cameras * Polaroid camera, a brand of instant camera formerly produced by Polaroid Corporation * Polaroid film, instant film, and photographs * Polar ...
tests. At first, he photographed his subjects only in motel rooms. Later, he moved onto the streets. When the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
exhibited 25 of the photographs in 1993 under the title ''Strangers'', each was labeled with the name of the man who posed, his hometown, his age, and the amount of money that changed hands. In 1999, diCorcia set up his camera on a tripod in
Times Square Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent ...
, attached strobe lights to scaffolding across the street and took a series of pictures of strangers passing under his lights. This resulted in two published books, ''Streetwork'' (1998) which showed wider views including subjects' entire bodies, and ''Heads'' (2001), which featured more closely cropped portraits as the name implies. Originally published in '' W'' as a result of a collaboration with Dennis Freedman between 1997 and 2008, diCorcia produced a series of fashion stories in places such as Havana, Cairo and New York.


Publications

*''Philip-Lorca diCorcia.'' New York:
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, 1995; 2003. . With a text by
Peter Galassi Peter Johnston Galassi (born April 18, 1951) is an American writer, curator, and art historian working in the field of photography. His principal fields are photography and nineteenth-century French art. Education Galassi graduated from Phillip ...
. *''Streetwork, 1993–1997''. Spain: Centro de Fotografía and Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1998. With texts by JoséLuis Brea and diCorcia. Exhibition catalogue. **''Streetwork''. Mexico City: Galeria OMR, 2000. Exhibition catalogue. **''Streetwork''. With a text by Thomas Weski. Hannover: Sprengel Museum, 2000. Exhibition catalogue. *''Heads.'' Göttingen:
Steidl Steidl is a German-language publisher, an international publisher of photobooks, and a printing company, based in Göttingen, Germany. It was started in 1968 by Gerhard Steidl and is still run by him. Overview The company was started by Gerha ...
, 2001. . With text by Luc Sante. Exhibition catalogue. *''Rencontres 6: Philip-Lorca diCorcia''. Paris: Images Modernes, 2001. With a text by Jeff Rian. *''A Storybook Life.'' Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms, 2003. *''Lucky Thirteen''. New York: PaceWildenstein, 2005. *''Philip-Lorca diCorcia.'' Steidl/Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2007. . With a text by Bennett Simpson, a foreword by Jill Medvedow, and an interview with diCorcia by Lynne Tillman. Exhibition catalogue. *''Thousand''. New York and Göttingen, Germany: SteidlDangin, 2007. *''Eleven''. Bologna, Italy: Freedman Damiani, 2011. Edited by Dennis Freedman. With text by Mary Gaitskill and an interview with diCorcia by Jeff Rian. *''Hustlers''. New York and Göttingen, Germany: SteidlDangin, 2013. . With a text by diCorcia. *''Philip-Lorca diCorcia''. Edited by Katharina Dohm, Hendrik Driessen, and Max Hollein. With texts by Dohm and
Geoff Dyer Geoff Dyer (born 5 June 1958) is an English author. He has written a number of novels and non-fiction books, some of which have won literary awards. Personal background Dyer was born and raised in Cheltenham, England, as the only child of a ...
, and an interview with diCorcia by Christoph Ribbat. Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; Bielefeld, Germany: Kerber. Exhibition catalogue. *''Philip-Lorca diCorcia: III Premio Internacional de Fotografía/III International Photography Award''. Madrid: Centro de Arte Alcobendas, 2014. With texts by Martinez de Corral, Ignacio Garcia de Vinuesa, Luis Miguel Torres Hernandez, and Christoph Ribbat. Exhibition catalogue.


Exhibitions


Solo exhibitions

*1993:
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, New York *1994:
Centre national de la photographie The Centre national de la photographie is a French association managed by the Ministry of Culture, dedicated to photography and contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21 ...
, Paris *1997:
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía The ''Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía'' ("Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre"; MNCARS) is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art. The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992, and is named for Queen Sofía. It ...
, Madrid *2000:
Sprengel Museum Sprengel Museum is a museum of modern art in Hanover, Lower Saxony, holding one of the most significant collections of modern art in Germany. It is located in a building situated adjacent to the Masch Lake (german: Maschsee) approximately south ...
,
Hannover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German States of Germany, state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germa ...
*2000: Art Space Ginza, Tokyo *2003:
Whitechapel Art Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the ...
,
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
*2009: ''Thousand,''
David Zwirner Gallery David Zwirner Gallery is an American contemporary art gallery owned by David Zwirner. It has four gallery spaces in New York City and one each in London, Hong Kong, and Paris. History The Zwirner Gallery opened in 1993 on the ground floor of ...
, New York. One thousand actual-size reproductions of diCorcia's Polaroids. *2014:
The Hepworth Wakefield The Hepworth Wakefield is an art museum in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, which opened on 21 May 2011. The gallery is situated on the south side of the River Calder and takes its name from artist and sculptor Barbara Hepworth who was born a ...
, Wakefield, UK. His first UK retrospective. *2015: ''Roid,''
Sprüth Magers Sprüth Magers is a commercial art gallery owned by Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers, with spaces in London, Berlin, Los Angeles and offices in Cologne, Hong Kong, New York and Seoul. The gallery represents over sixty artists and estates, inclu ...
, London, 2011. A series of diCorcia's Polaroids.


Group exhibitions

*''Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort'' traveling exhibition organized by
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, 1991 *1997
Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...
,
Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
*''Cruel and Tender,''
Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is ...
, London, 2003 *''Fashioning Fiction in Photography Since 1990,'' Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2004 *
Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...
's 54th Carnegie International exhibition,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
Leslie Simitch Limited - Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Retrieved on November 23-2007.


Collections

DiCorcia's work is held in the following public collections: *
Bibliothèque Nationale A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...
, Paris *
Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
, Paris *
Museum Folkwang Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th- and 20th-century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and patr ...
, Essen *
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, New York *
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
, New York *
Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
, London *
Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
, New York *
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...
*
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, New York


Awards

*1987:
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative abi ...
*1998: Alfred Eisenstaedt Award,
Life Magazine ''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest ma ...
, Style Essay *2001: Infinity Award for Applied Photography,
International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...
*2013: III International Photography Award Alcobendas, Spain *2021: Induction into the
International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum The International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum in St. Louis, Missouri honors those who have made great contributions to the field of photography. History In 1977 the first Hall of Fame and Museum opened in Santa Barbara, California and a f ...


Litigation

In 2006, a New York trial court issued a ruling in a case involving one of his photographs. One of diCorcia's New York random subjects was Erno Nussenzweig, an Orthodox Jew who objected on religious grounds to diCorcia's publishing in an artistic exhibition a photograph taken of him without his permission. The photo's subject argued that his privacy and religious rights had been violated by both the taking and publishing of the photograph of him. The judge dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the photograph taken of Nussenzweig on a street is art - not commerce - and therefore is protected by the
First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
. Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische ruled that the photo of Nussenzweig—a head shot showing him sporting a scraggly white beard, a black hat and a black coat—was art, even though the photographer sold 10 prints of it at $20,000 to $30,000 each. The judge ruled that New York courts have "recognized that art can be sold, at least in limited editions, and still retain its artistic character (...) rst endment protection of art is not limited to only starving artists. A profit motive in itself does not necessarily compel a conclusion that art has been used for trade purposes." The case was appealed and dismissed on procedural grounds.Law.com - 'Art' Photo Is Not Subject to Privacy Law, Judge Finds
Retrieved on May 3, 2008.


References


General references

* Unfamiliar Streets. Katherine A. Bussard. The Photographs of Richard Avedon, Charles Moore, Martha Rosler, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Philip-Lorca diCorcia Analogues of Reality. Yale University Press. 2012. p. 156. Referenced April 6, 2015.


External links



{{DEFAULTSORT:Dicorcia, Philip-Lorca 1953 births Living people Photographers from New York City Yale School of Art alumni 20th-century American photographers 20th-century American male artists 21st-century American photographers 21st-century American male artists American people of Italian descent School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts alumni Artists from Hartford, Connecticut Photographers from Connecticut Yale University faculty