Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Philip-Lorca diCorcia embraces artifice and a sense of cinema throughout his pioneering staged photographs. For the artist, making a single image can involve multiple Polaroid tests, dramatic artificial lighting, and deliberate posing; diCorcia’s final frames can recall the meticulous staging and disconcerting affectlessness of high-end fashion photography or the impromptu intimacy of street portraiture. The photographer’s subjects have ranged from anonymous strangers and sex workers (the basis of his breakthrough “Hustlers” series, 1990–92) to his own friends and family. In the mid-1970s, DiCorcia attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with David Armstrong and Nan Goldin, becoming a member of the so-called Boston School of photography. He received his MFA from Yale in 1979. Since then, he’s been the subject of solo shows at the Museo Reina Sofía, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, among other institutions.