Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Gottingen: Steidl, 2013.

Oversize photo book by American photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia (1953-) documenting male prostitutes. “I took the Hustler photographs following a period of repressive stomping on the U.S. Constitution’s First Amemdment, “Freedom of Speech”. An appropriate personification of the moment would be Jesse Helms, a man deeply committed to his bigotry. He was responsible for a lot of the stomping. In 1989, the National Endowment for the Arts was attacked for supporting a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition that was canceled as a result. In the same year, the money I received from the NEA had a proviso attached which required that I not transgress “American” values; at least that is how I remember it. I’ll be it was more onerous. Other artist recipients called for a boycott, or some kind of protest. I decided to beat Mr. Helms et al. at their own game, mendacity. I paid the “hustlers” in these photographs with the money awarded to me by the NEA. The price was meant to be the normal cost for the lowest common denominator of street sex. Of course it varies. Hustlers lie a lot too. I’ve included in the titles the name, age, hometown, and price paid of each one, as an emphatic declaration of the identity mutation and the taxonomy of the project implied. And, as a report to the government of its well-spent dollars. (from artist’s statement) A selection of 21 of the photographs were exhibited in diCorcia’s first museum show, Strangers, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1993. Here for the first time the complete series is published in it entirety.