Philip Lorca diCorcia

I didn't know who to pick from the list of photographers, because we've talked about most of them numerous times. Anyways, here is another post on Philip Lorca diCorcia's.

Every time I hear about him he seems to be known only as the brilliant photographer which finds a location, then looks for a person in the street and pays him to pose for him.

DiCorcia did no limit his career to fine art photography, he was also a commercial photographer. In the early 1980s, after his graduation from Yale, he assisted numerous professional commercial photographers. It is said that he was drawn to this type of work and started making a living as a freelance photographer for various magazines such as Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine and many more. He did not always comply to normal standards of commercial photography but instead added to his work his own unique way of looking at the world. Only later on in his career as a photographer did he do more fine art oriented photography. That, is what I think makes him an interesting photographer, his professional development. Unfortunately I counld not find any of his commercial work to post on the blog.

Now, he is mostly known for his signature style which is the use of highly dramatic, cinematic lighting and his carefully composed photographs. They might look simple but are in reality highly staged fictitious scenes. His most well known series of images “Hollywood 1990-1992” shot in Los Angeles strongly reflect his signature style.

Here are some photos of his that I quite like.

Sources:

-http://www.brain-juice.com/cgi-bin/show_bio.cgi?p_id=151

-http://www.cmoa.org/international/the_exhibition/artist.asp?dicorcia