Born: 1951

Hometown: Hartford, CT

Lives and Works: New York, NY

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Philip-Lorca-diCorcia/109283329090935

Education: MFA, Photography, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1979
Post Graduate Certificate, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 1976
Diploma, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 1975

About The Artist

A celebrated contemporary photographer, Philip-Lorca diCorcia creates images that exist between documentary and staged photography, like fictionalized documentary. His constructed narratives are very controlled, although at first glance they might be perceived as spontaneous tableaux. DiCorcia’s work borrows from the strategies of fashion, commercial, and advertising photography, and his pictures are technically admirable. Shooting in the Polaroid format, however, is unpredictable and implies spontaneity and intimacy. This inverts diCorcia’s tendency to work in his usually more removed style, showing rare moments of connectivity between the artist and his subject.

On his creative process, diCorcia says, “One of the things about Polaroid is that it’s not like a print—they don’t make it perfect. Sometimes you find yourself saying, ‘That’s close enough,’ or ‘Oh no, it came out all purple’… but I like that.” No wonder he has shot more than four thousand Polaroids over 25 years. Direct, honest, and often poetical observations of the quotidian, diCorcia's photographs are a narrative of personal experiences, like memories we discover in family photo albums.

Galleries

David Zwirner, New York, NY

Leslie Simitch Limited, New York, NY

Pace/Macgill Gallery, New York, NY

Select Permanent Collections

Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

Banesto Corporation, Madrid, Spain

Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France

Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL

Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham, England (through Contemporary Art Society)

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France

Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

DG Bank Collection, Frankfurt, Germany

Essl Collection, Vienna, Austria

Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Fondation Belgacom, Brussels

Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, Spain

Galleria Civica di Modena, Modena, Italy

Gemente Museum, Helmond, The Netherlands

George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden

Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium

Museo Nacional Centro de Art Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Pecci Museum, Prato, Italy

Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas, KS

Tate Britain, London, England

Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada

Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT