How the camera saved the photographer Philip Lorca diCorcia

On the eve of his first major retrospective in England Philip-Lorca di Corcia seems more concerned than flattered. ‘Superstitiously, I think most artists’ careers end up down the tubes after a retrospective,’ he says. ‘They really point out to you what you’ve done, and some of that is not pleasant, because you can always find something wrong with it.’

It’s strange to hear such self-deprecation from a man who is consistently referred to as one of the leading lights of his generation, an accolade that seems to amuse and frustrate him in equal measure.

The Connecticut-born photographer, 62, first came to prominence in 1993 with a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Hustlers was a stout-hearted foray into the twitchy tenor of the post-Reagan era. DiCorcia sought out male prostitutes on Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Boulevard, offering them the money they would earn from having sex if he could shoot their portrait.

‘At first I used motel rooms,’ he says, ‘because I had to set the shot up, and to do it behind a closed door was a lot easier. But there were always problems with the management, and eventually I felt motel rooms had become a kind of leitmotif in the whole thing – the mirrors, the bathroom, the bedspread – so I moved out on to the street.’

He has admitted that some of the first subjects fleeced him out of more than double the going rate, and professes he found the transaction process awkward. ‘Most of them didn’t believe I only wanted to pay them for their picture, they were like, “Is there anything else I can do for you?” At least in part, the series was intended as a thorn in the side of the pervading bigotry surrounding Aids (his brother Max died of an Aids-related disease).

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