PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA: David Zwirner Gallery

Philip-Lorca diCorcia's exhibit 'Thousand' at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York

Although it is difficult to view these images online, I am interested in the nature of the exhibit itself, which presents one thousand Polaroid images made by Philip-Lorca diCorcia. I think the experience of viewing that many images collectively in the same space would be overwhelming yet very stimulating. The connections and narratives one may make are infinite and are therefore able to reverberate and even conflict.
One of the seminal artists of contemporary photography, Philip-Lorca diCorcia produces work that exists on a wide spectrum of fictionalized documentary. Yet a thematic and conceptual unity, most often realized in serial form and particularly suited to monograph format marks each series in his oeuvre.
With Thousand, diCorcia effectively inverts his own tendency: the monograph is now the work itself. The sheer volume of material, which spans over 20 years of personal and artistic creation, shifts notions of context, narrative, and individual perception.
Flipping through the pages of Thousand is not so much a retrospective or summation of the artists life as it is an exercise in the construction of memory. An unwashed pan soaking in the sink precedes an unknown woman resembling an odalisque; the familiar linoleum aisles of a generic supermarket give way to a verdant swatch of lawn. These images are both alien and deeply familiar, and just as one moment in our lives may recall another, these photos echo among one another, within the book, within the canon of diCorcia's work, and within our personal experience. The Polaroid proves to be the perfect souvenir unique and subject to reinterpretation, like memory itself.