Hasta La Ideas

“I don’t shoot digitally. But ever since the second shoot I did for W, the negatives have been scanned and manipulated. Pascal Dangin [Box Studios] did the scanning, compositing, and printing. That step changed everything. Instead of going to elaborate ends to hide my lights and to manage every detail of the image, we did a lot of the work after in the computer. To this day I don’t know how to use Photoshop, because I don’t use it in my personal work. But almost all the images done for W were—at the very least—retouched. Often they were recomposed. I work with a tripod. All the frames from one set up are the same. What varied were the subjects, the expressions, and their positions within the fixed frame. It’s easy to change and recombine the framed elements. It’s hard to do it well.”

–Philip-Lorca diCorcia on the eleven photographic portfolios, completed between 1997 and 2008 in collaboration with former W creative director Dennis Freedman, that are collected for the first time and reproduced in their entirety in ELEVEN (Freedman Damiani). Selected images from the W projects are on view through March 5 at David Zwirner.

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