It would be fair to call photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia a voyeur. For the past few decades, the artist has searched for new modes of distorting reality, shooting everything from oblivious pedestrians in humming street scenes to intimate, painstakingly staged portraits. A retrospective at the Museum de Pont in the Netherlands marks the first major European survey of diCorcia’s extensive body of work.
The series “Streetwork” documents the sense of alienation inherent to urban life. Sidewalks of various metropolises—New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo—swarm with commuters, the people seemingly ignorant of the lens pointed their way (indeed, ignorant even of each other). Shot in the 1990s, these images halt the flurry of city life and bring to the forefront the minutiae of the individual’s daily existence.
Similarly, in diCorcia’s “Heads,” the faces of passersby are unsuspectingly thrown into intimate focus. Cast in bright light, crowds and buildings fading into a shadowy background, the subjects of this series frown and smile to themselves, their thoughts inaccessible to viewers.
DiCorcia also infuses moments of tenderness, exploitation, and vulnerability into his “Hustler” series, in which he staged portraits of male prostitutes on Los Angeles’s Santa Monica Boulevard. In Marilyn, a harsh spotlight falls on a man wearing a cropped wig and layers of makeup, while the youth depicted in Eddie Anderson stares hungrily through a diner window. Moreover, the full title of each photograph also notes the man’s hometown, age, and typical fee, essentially cataloguing a marginalized group’s dashed dreams of fame.
Through January 19, 2014, at the Museum de Pont, Tilburg, Netherlands; depont.nl
