BOOKLET presents Philip-Lorca diCorcia : street-photography star and cinemaphotographer of emotions

He is the star of staged street photography. A cinematographer of emotions. Someone who tends to invite coincidence to a preconceived game. Just to let the viewer walk out as the winner. Successful author and curator Nadine Barth caught up with this talented photographer for the latest issue of BOOKLET….

His career reads like the prototypical story of the successful American photographer: Born in 1951, Hartford, Connecticut. Studied at art school in Boston, followed by a degree from Yale, subsequent participation in collective exhibitions, first solo show in a gallery in Milan, a few years later he entered the Olympus of the arts world, the MoMA, New York, 1993 – and virtually every other important institution in the world followed. From the Folkwang Museum in Essen to the London Photographer‘s Gallery, from the Kunsthalle Stockholm to the ICA in Boston. Last year, a juicy retrospective at the LACMA in Los Angeles crowned his relatively young career.

His story is partly shaped by the fact that many photo adepts are still unable to pronounce his name correctly (dis-core-shka), and reckon he is part of the fashion world, because after all, he occasionally delivers bizarre series to magazines such as “W”. The other part is concerned with the reception of his work. He has not always been acclaimed to an extent that his present market value would lead you to believe.

First and foremost the “Hustlers” series, which originated in California between 1990 and 1992, soon became a hot topic of discussion, although it is exactly what made him famous. The background was an argument regarding government funding. The “National Endowment for the Arts” pulled funds from a presentation of Mapplethorpe images, which had already been granted the funding, because they were deemed too sexist. DiCorcia however used a scholarship by the same organisation to portray street hustlers from Hollywood, of all things. More on this:

“I was given a government grant on condition my work did not go against moral values. I protested by indicating in the legends how much I had paid the hustlers using money from this government grant.”

Thus one reads: “ Eddie Anderson, 21-years-old, Houston, Texas; 20 $” or “Marilyn, Las Vegas, Nevada; 30$”. Not only the reference to the objects‘ purchase value was a unique feature of the series, the whole setting was too. From then on, it was celebrated as the genesis of choreographed street photography, very unusual for the times. From a historical point of view, up until diCorcia, the documentary field was shaped by Henri-Cartier Bressons‘ “decisive moment” or the socially critical pretence of a certain Walker Evans. The use of colour as a self-evident form of expression had not been made respectable until William Eggleston and his vignettes. DiCorcia knows of his revolutionary role, but plays it down:

“The idea of reconfiguring street photography didn’t occur to me. I was interested in moving from control to serendipity.”

Nevertheless, he did not simply pick up his camera and let coincidence have its way, he constructed the set and searched for a protagonist.

“I’d travel out to L.A. to shoot, staying in the motel where Janis Joplin had died. The meter was ticking all the time, and I had to be very efficient and try to get as much done as possible. I’d figure out what I was going to shoot, arrange the scene with an assistant, take a few Polaroids, go off and find the hustlers and approach them. The I’d get them to come back and stand in the exact same position as my assistants had in the Polaroids.”

They come across like a scene from a movie ...

“Part of the reason people call my work cinematic is because I never put he camera in the position of someone holding a camera. Everybody’s used to seeing photographs that look like you‘re part of the room. I and the camera and the point of view are outside this scene. I try to eliminate any sense that the viewer – and the photographer by inference – is participating in what is going on.”

Notwithstanding, the portrait sitter’s whole life is unveiled in the shot. One is inclined to take them by the hand and lead them away, on the other hand one might prefer to see them eternally frozen in that position – so as not to let the moment end.

“The idea of the images being cinematic had a lot to do with the act that we were in Hollywood. I thought of the people as puppets who were unstrung, mercilessly disempowered – not preyed upon, but living on the edge and not by choice. The fetishization of self-destructive behaviour is only romantic if you have a choice. So it was interesting to set up scenarios that often didn’t portray the real circumstances.”

Back in New York, diCorcia devoted his time to a series, which takes the concept of a staged image or reality to even more radical levels. He installs a flashlight on a scaffolding, positions himself at some distance and takes random pictures of passers-by.

“One of the most difficult things was not just to get them technically right but to get images that seemed significantly different from one another, which is maybe where the taxonomy comes in. The project took about a year and a half. I didn’t go out every day, but I figured by the number of rolls of film I shot that I photographed about 3000 people.”

In the long-run, only 17 were chosen. 17 out of 3000 ? How? DiCorcia explains it via a typical excursus about the American way of seeing things. He did not search for the ordinary representative of society, no repetitions and people that are different from each other, but people who irradiate something.

“What makes somebody more interesting than somebody else anyway? Often it’s who they’re standing next to. It’s symptomatic of American culture that the ideals people have of attractiveness have been established and they’re all very youth orientated. People can be extremely sophisticated looking, and the minute they open their mouths out comes something valley girl and high pitched. I guess one of the advantages of photography is that you don’t have to listen to them.”

One of his “numbers”, head #13, subsequently “piped up”. He complained bitterly. The case “Nussenzweig vs. DiCorcia” landed a spot in legislation history. Erno Nussenzweig of Jewish descent, born in 1992, was not amused that he had been photographed on the street without his prior knowledge and that his picture was up for sale in DiCorcia‘s gallery. Thus, the freedom of art became a subject of dispute, and ultimately the claim bit the dust. Also, merely 10 ordered copies of the image made it a “limited” edition. A victory for street photography. DiCorcia, unperturbed, went on to set about his next project. In “A Storybook Life” coincidence plays an even bigger role, it becomes the artistic principle.

“In life, people have a very hard time seeing the overall picture; it’s too complex, and it’d probably kill them if they did see it. Yet, every once in a while one catches a glimpse – you see that we’re on a planet, in a solar system, in a universe that is ever-expanding, and you can actually imagine that. But you have to force yourself to think about it, and a lot of other little things that get in the way. There’s just too much information, and it’s hard to know whether one thing is more important than the other.”

How does one choose? As an artist, a photographer, a friend, a relative? In “A Storybook Life”, two pictures frame a very personal oeuvre, DiCorcia‘s father as he lies in bed and finally, DiCorcia‘s father lying in a coffin. The 74 photographs in-between depict not his father‘s life, but a life which could act as a substitute for many lives.

“Yes, I began the editing process with those two pictures in mind as bookends and then worked from there. It has always bemused me that people find my work so cold. In some strange way it’s a reflection of the way people receive emotional content through photography, which tends to be anecdotal and a direct reference to something you can understand.”

More of an associative level of understanding for the people on the pictures are unknown, the captions offering ever so little information. Similar to the “Thousand” project, which saw 1000 Polaroids of bygone years, including exposition tests as well as snapshots, arranged in a specific way – recently exhibited at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York.

“I’ve always maintained that good work, whether poetry or art, has the capacity to short-circuit front-brain-thinking. Not expecting that things will make a lot of sense leads you to the other parts of your brain which are equally important.”

A lot of personal pictures are included ...

“Thousand is the first book I’ve done where I am the protagonist. Part of the promise and the curse of photography is its accessibility, and I think that one aspect of doing a project like this in the context of the contemporary art world is to raise and question the idea of authorship.”

Somehow, “Thousand” brings to mind DiCorcia‘s first steps. The immediacy, out righteousness, the simple and yet created. One of his earliest pictures is “Mario” from 1978. Mario stands in front of an open fridge, indecisive as to what he wants to take out. His desire drifts into nothing, thrown back by the lurid (provided by the fridge) light. Mario is DiCorcia‘s brother.

“Before I started photographing my family, I didn’t photograph people at all, and now I almost never take a photograph that doesn’t have a person in it. I’ve always admitted that photographing my family was pretty logical because I could push them around and tell them what to do. They were available, and although they were almost invisible to me, everybody else seemed to find them interesting.”

So it is about closeness? About the ever so exponential intimacy which can only be found in utmost banality? About meaning, emblematised as the light of staged coincidence ?

“Within all the constrictions and restrictions that you apply to the situation, there is always the opportunity for something unsuspecting to happen, and that’s the opportunity you have to leave the door open for. Meaning comes from putting yourself in meaningful situations. You can’t manufacture it. And one way to shoot something truly meaningful is not to talk about yourself.”