Philip-Lorca diCorcia

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Philip-Lorca diCorcia (b. Hartford, Connecticut 1953) is an American artist photographer.

He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he earned a Diploma in 1975 and a 5th year certificate in 1976. He received a M.F.A from Yale University in Photography in 1979.

Much of diCorcia's work has the appearance of documentary photography but is actually choreographed and often elaborately lit.

He has won several awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987 and has exhibited internationally in museums and galleries.

[edit] Litigation

Philip-Lorca diCorcia's photo of Erno Nussenzweig

In 2006, a New York trial court issued a ruling in a case involving one of his photographs. diCorcia had set up elaborate strobe rigs on a New York City street corner and had photographed people walking down the street, including Emo Nussenzweig, an Orthodox Jew who objected on religious grounds to deCorcia's publishing in an artistic exhibition a photograph taken of him without his permission. The photo's subject argued that his privacy and religious rights had been violated by both the taking and publishing of the photograph of him. The judge dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the photograph taken of Nussenzweig on a street and sold for thousands of dollars is art - not commerce - and therefore is protected by the First Amendment, even though his religion forbids it.

Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische ruled that the photo of Nussenzweig--a head shot showing him sporting a scraggly white beard, a black hat and a black coat--was art, even though the photographer took it surreptitiously near New Yorks' Times Square and then sold 10 prints of it at $20,000 to $30,000 each. The judge ruled that New York courts have "recognized that art can be sold, at least in limited editions, and still retain its artistic character. . . . First Amendment protection of art is not limited to only starving artists. A profit motive in itself does not necessarily compel a conclusion that art has been used for trade purposes." See Nussenzweig v. DiCorcia.