PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA (B. 1951)

Ike Cole, 38 Years Old, Los Angeles, California; $25, 1990- 1992, is a luminous photograph by Philip-Lorca diCorcia. A photograph from this edition was included in diCorcia’s 2003 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as well as in the 2006 exhibition Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In the photograph, the titular Ike stands shirtless in the parking lot of Mayfair Market, illuminated by the store’s glowing windows. The work is part of diCorcia’s Hollywood series in which the artist photographed male prostitutes along a section of Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. For each image, diCorcia found subjects that he then paid to photograph, and their payment and biographical information is relayed in the work’s title. Using a combination of natural and artificial light, and photographic flash, diCorcia’s scenes are saturated with the deep purples of a dramatic dusk. Emblematic of his practice overall, Ike Cole, 38 Years Old, Los Angeles, California; $25 straddles fact and fiction, and in doing so, is wonderfully cinematic.