Philip-Lorca diCorcia

    Philip-Lorca diCorcia is an amazing and talented photographer who has changed the game and has inspired so many young and old artists. His art is often described as cinematic and movie like. Images that he produced makes it seem like he captured a scene from a movie or show and the lighting and colors really gives it a more surreal feeling. 

    Philip-Lorca diCorcia grew up in Connecticut and studied photography throughout his education career. It was during his time at Yale that he started taking portraits and started perfecting his skill. His techniques include placing people in staged environments where light and color is the focus of images. The lighting to me includes rich and vibrants colors that emphasizes the look of a cinematic movie. The feels that the images gives is dynamic, vivid, and strong. This feeling was created due to exposure, lighting, sharpness and more. To set up his pictures, diCorcia will create a scene in which light focused on the skin and the colors of the background sets the tone of what the outcome will be. His postproduction includes touchups and the images creates a mood set in a cinematic scene.

    It is known of diCorcia to mix up theatrics, artificial, and truth together. He tends to make his images theatrics by placing his subjects in a setting where they wouldn't normally be or it is exaggerated. The artificial elements includes the lights that he uses. Many times there is a light source outside of natural light that is visible or assumed to be in the image. It is the artificial lights that helps add to the exaggerated cinematic looks of his images. The artificial lights also emphasize facial expression, mood, and color within the image. It is the image below that in turn inspired my series. I really enjoy the light source coming from the refrigerator, the expression on the subjects face, and the light from the counter top. The photo itself feels like I myself can be in place of the subject and that is something I appreciate about diCorcia's images. In most of his images, I can place myself in the subjects place and feel like I am too in a movie scene. The images he tends to capture are of situations of every day life but it also encompasses the stillness of a specific moment within that situation. I also loved the idea of having more of a moody tone to the images but a strong sense of cinema also. In my own images, I planned to tone down the exposure in the background and highlight the expression of the face and body language of my subject. My focus for my self portraits is to emphasize the artificial light source, expression of my subject, and mood go each image like diCorcia.