Made for the fake-news era, this photographer’s work was ahead of its time
- American Philip-Lorca diCorcia tested the line between fact and fiction in the pre-Photoshop era, as a retrospective at David Zwirner in Hong Kong shows
- The work of a very different photographer, Qin Yifeng, is featured at White Cube – flat monochromes born of his interest in calligraphy and abstract painting
You know art photography is having a moment in Hong Kong when David Zwirner devotes its gallery to the medium – and for the third time in less than two years.
Its survey of the work of American Philip-Lorca diCorcia, known for blending staged photography and reportage, has a particular resonance at a time when, in Hong Kong and around the world, the veracity of news photography is constantly being questioned. That diCorcia was testing the line between fact and fiction in the pre-Photoshop era shows his prescience.
The show opens with Heads, experiments in street photography in which diCorcia mimicked studio lighting in a public outdoor setting. The resulting images have the drama of meticulously planned shots but the immediacy of candid photography. Accompanying these are a collage of Polaroids and, in the next room, an early series of staged moments featuring diCorcia’s friends and family.
On the lower floor of the gallery is his Hustlers series – portraits of male sex workers in Hollywood that, like the shots in the next room selected from his portfolio of W magazine editorials, have the feeling of moments captured, but are full of melancholy and loneliness.
“He actually opened a lot of doors for photographers working for mass media, way before digital cameras, way before the internet, before Flickr, during the time people were trying to push forward the photographic vocabulary,” says Leo Xu, the gallery’s Hong Kong director. “It’s ahead of those ‘alternative pictures’ that have been managed [these days] by advertisers, fashion houses.”