Ralph Smith, 21 years old, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, $25

The Series “Hustlers” by Philip Lorca Dicorcia is a collection of photographs of male prostitutes of the 90’s. The portraits are capture in a remarkable lightning that seem mostly natural ambient light even though they all are meticulously planned. One of the Photographs I like to talk from the collection is “Ralph Smith” a 21 years old from Florida. I find the lightning in this composition was very well thought. Starting with the way Philip Lorca integrated the ambient light with the artificial. The use of the Big Bright led sign like a Soft box as a key light. In the opposite side he fills in the shadows, probably in the street with a gridded soft box to direct the light.

The composition is quite busy. It has street lights bouncing around everywhere but still it doesn’t distracts from the subject. The guy is set in the middle of the frame sitting in the grass looking at a lower corner of the frame blank point in space. Overall the lightning composition along with the character pose convey a quite dramatic scenario of a possible moment in a day of this individual. One can learn quite a lot from this artist by analyzing the light, the colors, the composition the way this artist think and frames a story. Captivating attention by first glance Phillips portrait works, tells you a whole lot of story with only one frame.