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Tim Morgan Jr., 21 years old, Los Angeles, California, $25 / Joe Egure, 18 years old, Los Angeles, California, $25
Artist
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
(Born 1951, United States)
Date1990-92
MediumChromogenic print
DimensionsImage: 23 3/4 x 36 1/8 in. (60.33 x 91.76 cm)
Framed: 31 3/4 x 44 1/8 x 1 5/8 in. (80.65 x 112.08 x 4.13 cm)
Framed: 31 3/4 x 44 1/8 x 1 5/8 in. (80.65 x 112.08 x 4.13 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase, The Friends of Art Endowment Fund
Object number2014.21
Status
Not on viewCopyright© Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Category
Label TextContemporary art was a hotbed of controversy in the United States in 1989. As the AIDS epidemic ravaged communities, conservative senators Alfonse D’Amato and Jesse Helms launched a political crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), attacking its funding policies and calling for the censorship of NEA-supported art the senators deemed indecent and blasphemous. Photography lay at the center of the debate. Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ of 1987—a photograph of a crucifix submerged in the artist’s own urine—incited furor when exhibited in 1989, and the Corcoran Gallery cancelled its planned retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs under pressure of conservative opposition to the works’ explicit depictions of homosexuality.
The NEA grant that photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia received in 1989 came with the stipulation (upheld by the organization only for that year) that any work produced must not be “obscene.” In a gesture of blatant defiance, diCorcia commenced the influential series Hustlers, in which he solicited male prostitutes from the streets of Los Angeles to pose, clothed, for photographs. As a modeling fee, diCorcia drew from his NEA stipend to pay each man the amount he would have charged for his sexual services. Each photograph is titled with the hustler’s name, age, place of birth, and the payment he received to pose for the camera. The series thus fulfilled the grant’s condition of avoiding explicit imagery, while implicitly addressing the AIDS crisis and mounting a subversive social commentary on America’s contemporary Culture Wars.
Shot between 1990 and 1992, Hustlers merges traditions of documentary street photography with the artifice and fantasy of Hollywood films. DiCorcia used real locations around Santa Monica Boulevard, including motel rooms, fast food chains, and street corners, but each site was carefully staged and set up in advance with supplemental flash lighting. The resulting images are reminiscent of film stills, presenting their subjects as if suspended in a larger, implied narrative.
The NEA grant that photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia received in 1989 came with the stipulation (upheld by the organization only for that year) that any work produced must not be “obscene.” In a gesture of blatant defiance, diCorcia commenced the influential series Hustlers, in which he solicited male prostitutes from the streets of Los Angeles to pose, clothed, for photographs. As a modeling fee, diCorcia drew from his NEA stipend to pay each man the amount he would have charged for his sexual services. Each photograph is titled with the hustler’s name, age, place of birth, and the payment he received to pose for the camera. The series thus fulfilled the grant’s condition of avoiding explicit imagery, while implicitly addressing the AIDS crisis and mounting a subversive social commentary on America’s contemporary Culture Wars.
Shot between 1990 and 1992, Hustlers merges traditions of documentary street photography with the artifice and fantasy of Hollywood films. DiCorcia used real locations around Santa Monica Boulevard, including motel rooms, fast food chains, and street corners, but each site was carefully staged and set up in advance with supplemental flash lighting. The resulting images are reminiscent of film stills, presenting their subjects as if suspended in a larger, implied narrative.
Debbie Grossman
2009-10