Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s dark and defining series, Hustlers, was shot against a backdrop of devastation and despair during the AIDS pandemic in the late 1980s and early 90s. The work served as a defiant response to (largely) right-wing bigotry targeting the First Amendment rights of homosexuals — specifically, those working in the arts.
In 1989 an exhibition by photographer Andres Serrano (which famously included a photo of a crucifix submerged in the artist's own urine) stirred controversy and led to attacks on the funding policies of the National Endowment for the Arts. That same year, under mounting pressure from Republican senators Jesse Helms and Al D’Amato, who objected to the explicit homosexuality of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work, the Corcoran Gallery cancelled a planned NEA-funded exhibition of the artist's work.
Artists who received fellowships from the NEA in 1989, including diCorcia, did so with the proviso that the work they made would not be "obscene."
DiCorcia, who until this point had conceived of his photos as singular images—intimate, self-contained scenarios of family members and friends in often-mundane situations—embarked on what would become his first cohesive series. With a wholly new premise, he began working with both determination and with a subtle but unwavering strain of subterfuge.
DiCorcia made five trips to Los Angeles, where, with an assistant, he would set up his 6x7 Linhof view camera and lights and run through each potential shot with meticulous detail, before cruising the streets of Santa Monica propositioning hustlers, drug addicts and drifters. He then brought his subjects to his pre-prepared locations to make their portraits and paid them (with NEA funds) the equivalent fee they would have charged for sex.
DiCorcia photographed at dusk, in cheap motel rooms, on street corners, in parking lots and against the neon-lit strip where the hustlers plied their trade. The photographs are titled with the subject's name, age, place of birth -- and the customary price for his services. Masterfully depicting the bleak underside of Hollywood, they also capture the town's unfulfilled dreams and its fake intimacy.