New York, 1993

Philip-Lorca diCorcia (b. 1951) is an American photographer. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and afterwards diCorcia attended Yale University where he received a Master of Fine Arts in Photography in 1979. He now lives and works in New York, and teaches at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. DiCorcia was born in 1951 in Connecticut. His family is of Italian descent, having moved to the United States from Abruzzo. DiCorcia alternates between informal snapshots and iconic quality staged compositions that often have a baroque theatricality. 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. His work could be described as documentary photography mixed with the fictional world of cinema and advertising, which creates a powerful link between reality, fantasy and desire. DiCorcia would photograph random people in urban spaces all around the world. He would often hide lights in the pavement, which would illuminate a random subject in a special way, often isolating them from the other people in the street. Besides his family, associates and random people he has also photographed personas already theatrically enlarged by their life choices, such as the pole dancers or male prostitutes. His pictures have black humor within them, and have been described as "Rorschach-like", since they can have a different interpretation depending on the viewer. As they are planned beforehand, diCorcia often plants in his concepts issues like the marketing of reality, the commodification of identity, art, and morality.