Philip-Lorca di Corcia in Venice

[jon w.]

In case any of you are here on holiday, check out the amazing di

Corcia retrospective at the Bevilacqua Foundation gallery in Piazza

San Marco. It has a few of the well-known strobe lit street shots,

but is mainly based around a truly impressive quasi-autobiographical

sequence, made up of photos dating back to 75. I'd not seen this work

before. If I could shoot colour in the way that he does, I'd never

use a BandW film again. Maybe di Corcia would be an interesting

photographer to discuss in a street and documentary forum, since his

work combines real locations and non-professional participants with

extremely controlled techniques and lighting.

[thomas_sullivan]

a few links<br><br>

 

<a href="http://www.galeriealminerech.com/artists/artists/philip-lorca/philip-lorca.html"><u>#1</u></a><br><br>

 

<a href="http://www.whitechapel.org/content41.html"><u>#2</u></a><br><br>

 

<a href="http://www.nyip.com/tips/topic_spotlight0999.html"><u>#3</u></a><br><br>

 

<a href="http://www.noorderlicht.com/eng/fest99/wonder/corcia/ph1.html"><u>#4</u></a><br>

[akochanowski]

Oh yes, in my eyes that's awfully good stuff, even the series that slide into campiness. He used to do travel photography until success in the gallery/university circuit allowed him to do these wonderful set-ups more or less fulltime. You can see the lighting skills at work in the Hollywod prostitute series and the New York shots where he set up strobes that were triggered at unsuspecting passers-by. I am certain his work is MF.

 

PLC pushed the street genre along pretty convincingly as far as I'm concerned. On a personal note, I was waffling a few years ago whether to keep shooting black and white street and ran across one of his monographs which probably tipped the scales for me to dump TriX and shoot exclusively in color. Not that my stuff compares-- it does not.

[jon w.]

Maybe his genre should be defined as 'staged documentary', which only sounds confusing until you see the work, which is immensely sophisticated and convincing both compositionally and dramatically / psychologically. The title of the retrospective is 'A Storybook Life', I think, so look out for it in case it travels. There's a catalogue too, which may be available online. Good quality printing, tho a little pricey for me. The shots look as tho they're all either 6 by 9, or LF, which makes the apparent spontaneity of many all the more impressive.