Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s work stretches the meaning of “fashion” photography. In 2000, he produced two extended fashion portfolios for W magazine: "Stranger in Paradise," which was 24 pages long, and “Cuba Libre,” which ran 30 pages. The latter presented a country arrested in time that captures and holds the imagination. Juror Robert Stevens wrote, “There is an eerie feeling that something is not right about these pictures, but the results are nonetheless a feast for the eyes.”
DiCorcia completed Yale University’s graduate program in photography in 1979. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1987 and a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1990. His series of photographs of male prostitutes in Los Angeles was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1993.