Philip-Lorca diCorcia Hollywood

Philip-Lorca diCorcia has not given his new series a title. We shall be showing five works from it in the gallery’s first room; five works from the earlier “Hollywood” series will be on view in the second room.

We have arranged these works by bringing them together in the  same show, because they are two parts of one and the same subject: the human condition versus the Hollywood mirage.

Both series deal with prostitution as the final stage at the bottom of the ladder of lost illusions in young men and women arriving in Los Angeles to get into movies and try their luck.

The men have become "hustlers" (male prostitutes) and the women pole dancers in striptease joints. These works by Philip-Lorca diCorcia are striking, first and foremost, by their aesthetic qualities, and they bring out their subjects through the way they look at things and their attitude, like timeless figures of hope and despair, or, paradoxically for the pole dancers, sometimes as virgin martyrs. Philip-Lorca diCorcia reveals an underground world which, in a society where everything becomes “fashionable” in no time at all, is a real underground.