Synopses & Reviews
This small, thick and astonishing 2008-page tome features precisely 1000 color Polaroids by the important American contemporary photographer of fictionalized documentary, Philip-Lorca diCorcia. For diCorcia, who most often works in themed series just the right size for a monograph, the sheer volume of this material, which spans over 20 years of personal and artistic creation, was its central challenge. The final selection's heft defied context and narrative so resolutely that in the end diCorcia enlisted a computer to randomize the layout sequence according to restrictions that he set up. Flipping through the pages of 1000 Polaroids does not offer a retrospective or a summation; it displays an exercise in chance and the construction of memory. An unwashed pan soaking in the sink precedes an unknown woman resembling an odalisque; the familiar linoleum aisles of a supermarket give way to a verdant swatch of lawn. These images are at once alien and deeply familiar. And just as one moment in our lives may recall another, these photographs echo among one another--within the book, within the canon of diCorcia's work, and within each reader's personal experience. The Polaroid proves to be the perfect souvenir, unique and subject to reinterpretation, like memory itself.
Synopsis
Philip-Lorca diCorcia is among the most innovative and influential photographers working today. For nearly 30 years he has explored the intersection of documentary style with cinematic production, making contemporary work that perches uncannily between the fictional and the real. This survey of diCorcia's career, from the late-1970s to the present, draws from the artist's most acclaimed series, including Hustlers, Streetworks, Heads, A Storybook Life, and Lucky 13. In work from the 1980s, diCorcia shows friends and family in domestic tableaux tinged with an air of mystery, working from the subject matter of his life but eschewing romantic intimacy for studied detachment and pitch-perfect detail. In the 1990s, he turns to the great American tradition of street photography. That swiftly-changing environment might have seemed unlikely for diCorcia's meticulous style, but it provided some of his best-known images, including those of male prostitutes and anonymous crowds of urban pedestrians. In more recent work, he has photographed erotic pole dancers, their bodies caught in contorted and seductive free-fall. The accompanying texts here include a piece by the New York writer and critic, Lynne Tillman, author of the acclaimed 2006 novel, American Genius, A Comedy.