LOS ANGELES.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Philip-Lorca diCorcia, an exhibition on one of the most influential photographers of all time. On view from May 23 through September 14, 2008, Philip-Lorca diCorcia is the first showing of a powerful installation of 1,000 of the artist’s Polaroid photographs, titled Thousand. The exhibition also features works from his key series of the past twenty years including Hustlers, Streetwork, Heads, and Lucky 13. DiCorcia’s merging of a high degree of photographic preconception with the happenstance of street casting has become an influential mode of contemporary practice and secured a place for diCorcia in photography’s pantheon.

DiCorcia’s installation of Thousand (completed in 2007), his most recent series, gives an alternative view of the infinite possibilities and practice of photography. LACMA is honored to be hosting the first gallery installation of the photographer’s selection of 1,000 of his Polaroids, which cumulatively offers a vantage point into this artist’s sensibility and visual preoccupations.

In his series Hustlers (1990-92), diCorcia selected locations along Santa Monica Boulevard, typically at twilight or night. The artist would then cast hustlers on the streets around him as his subjects. The series Streetworks (1993-1998) is an ambitious, international project that illuminates the unconscious choreography and infinite events that occur on city streets. In Heads (2001-2003), diCorcia’s long-lens camera and remotely triggered flash singled out people walking on a New York street, creating random archetypes of a contemporary city.

DiCorcia’s Lucky 13 (2004) hovers on the edge of social acceptability in its stark and dramatic visualization of pole dancers. As with his other works, diCorcia’s keen depiction of his subjects offer an open-endedness of meaning for the viewer to explore.

“We are very excited to be working with Philip-Lorca diCorcia on this exhibition,” says LACMA’s Curator of Photography, Charlotte Cotton. “He has an intense and complex vision of the world and both facets of this exhibition resonate with Philip-Lorca’s unique perspective.”

Born in 1951, DiCorcia studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and then received a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University in Photography in 1979. A grant recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, he received early acknowledgement of his contribution to photography in 1993 with a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His work was later exhibited in the 1997 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York,in “Cruel and Tender” at the Tate Modern, London (2003), and his most recent monographic exhibition was held at the ICA, Boston in 2007. DiCorcia’s books include Philip-Lorca diCorcia (1995); Streetwork 1993-1997 (1997); Heads (2001); A Storybook Life (2003); and Thousand (2007).