Philip-Lorca diCorcia Overview

Philip-Lorca diCorcia was born in 1951 in Hartford, Connecticut. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he earned a Diploma in 1975 and a 5th year certificate in 1976. He received a Master of Fine Arts... [more]

Philip-Lorca diCorcia was born in 1951 in Hartford, Connecticut. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he earned a Diploma in 1975 and a 5th year certificate in 1976. He received a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University in Photography in 1979. DiCorcia's work has often been noted to blend the line between the documentary and the theatrical, the snapshot and the staged. His early work come onto the scene in the '70s, just as conceptual photography was taking the stage. Early subjects included family members and friends shot in an almost pho-documentary style which blended realism with choreography, naturalism with kitch - i.e. the famous shot of his brother scoping out the empty fride for a late night snack, his face aglow from the perfect timed flash bulb. Later works adopted a more outwardly transgressive lens, including his Hollywood series of elaborately staged shots of male hookers, addicts and drifters whom diCorcia notoroiously solicited with money from an NEA grant. [show less]