[IP] Art trumps privacy?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Krulwich <krulwich@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: March 19, 2006 2:36:06 AM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Art trumps privacy?
Reply-To: krulwich@xxxxxxxxx
Dave, curious what IP thinks of the conflict between artistic
expression and right to privacy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/arts/design/19phot.html
The Theater of the Street, the Subject of the Photograph
By PHILIP GEFTER
IN 1999 Philip-Lorca diCorcia set up his camera on a tripod in Times
Square, attached strobe lights to scaffolding across the street and,
in the time-honored tradition of street photography, took a rand! om
series of pictures of strangers passing under his lights. The project
continued for two years, culminating in an exhibition of photographs
called "Heads" at Pace/MacGill Gallery in Chelsea. "Mr. diCorcia's
pictures remind us, among other things, that we are each our own
little universe of secrets, and vulnerable," Michael Kimmelman wrote,
reviewing the show in The New York Times. "Good art makes you see the
world differently, at least for a while, and after seeing Mr.
diCorcia's new 'Heads,' for the next few hours you won't pass another
person on the street in the same absent way." But not everyone was
impressed.
When Erno Nussenzweig, an Orthodox Jew and retired diamond merchant
from Union City, N.J., saw his picture last year in the exhibition
catalog, he called his lawyer. And then he sued Mr. diCorcia and Pace
for exhibiting and publishing the portrait without permission and
profiting from it financially. The suit sought an injunction to halt
sa! les and publication of the photograph, as well as $500,000 in
compensatory damages and $1.5 million in punitive damages.
The suit was dismissed last month by a New York State Supreme Court
judge who said that the photographer's right to artistic expression
trumped the subject's privacy rights.
...
State Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische rejected Mr.
Nussenzweig's claim that his privacy had been violated, ruling on
First Amendment grounds that the possibility of such a photograph is
simply the price every person must be prepared to pay for a society
in which information and opinion freely flow. And she wrote in her
decision that the photograph was indeed a work of art. "Defendant
diCorcia has demonstrated his general reputation as a photographic
artist in the international artistic community," she wrote.
But she indirectly suggested that other cases might ! be more
challenging. "Even while recognizing art as exempted from the reach
of New York's privacy laws, the problem of sorting out what may or
may not legally be art remains a difficult one," she wrote.
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