Philip-Lorca diCorcia (b. 1951)

Philip-Lorca diCorcia is an internationally exhibited and renowned American Photographer, based in New York City. diCorcia studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Botson, and received a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University, where he now teaches. diCorcia is a pioneer of staged depictions of everyday life, inspired in part by the artificiality of traditional American cinema. “I thought of the people as puppets who were unstrung, mercilessly disempowered – not preyed upon, but living on the edge and not by choice,” diCorcia said of his earliest L.A. subjects. “So it was interesting to set up scenarios that often didn’t portray the real circumstances.” diCorcia first achieved notoriety for his series, “Hustlers” (1990-1992), for which he staged portraits of male prostitutes on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood.