© Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Courtesy of Philip-Lorca diCorcia and David Zwirner, New York

Philip-Lorca diCorcia is well-known for his carefully planned and meticulously executed photographs involving family members and a variety of “actors,” including anonymous strangers, pole dancers and street hustlers. Over the past decades, he has been influential in reinventing the genre of street photography. Deploying characters in preconceived yet seemingly random poses and contexts, diCorcia’s photographs are far from candid snapshots. They explore the idea of the “indecisive moment” and revolve around a  tension between the casual and the posed, the accidental and the fated.

© Courtesy Philip-Lorca diCorcia/David Zwirner, New York.  Above: W, September 1997, #3, 1997.

On view, for the first time in New York at the David Zwirner gallery, is an exhibition of fashion photographs by Philip-Lorca diCorcia. The exhibition, Eleven, opens tonight and runs through March 5, 2011. All of the photographs were selected from a series of eleven editorial projects diCorcia created for W magazine between 1997 and 2008.

“The tableaux-like, monumental quality, which envelops diCorcia’s broader oeuvre provides an intimate match with the contrived, theatrical nature of the fashion shoot. Together with W magazine’s long-time creative director Dennis Freedman (now the creative director of Barneys New York), diCorcia traveled to distinct locations around the world to produce his photographic essays,” David Zwirner gallery says. “Employing his own models as well as people cast on the spot, his images weave together richly loaded narratives with a stylist’s selection of designer-brand clothes. These narratives sometimes appear far removed from the fashion industry’s traditional emphasis on formulaic beauty and harmony, and instead involve a delicate balance between glamour and grit, imagination and irony.” To see more of diCorcia’s work click here.

Warning: This post contains partial nudity.

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