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I walked around with my camera waiting for things to happen - cliches, incidents - I leave it open. I am only partly conscious of what’s going on - there’s always more than what I expect, or less than what I hope. The instant where things occur is serendipity.
The main exhibit at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art right now is a massive collection of Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s photography. I was struck by his fantastic use of lighting in most of his work, especially the series of street photographs where “DiCorcia attached an elaborate system of strobe lights to construction scaffolding, and aimed them and his camera toward a fixed point on the the sidewalk [and] from 20 feet away, he operated the camera’s shutter and the lights, collecting images of passers-by.” The subjects are thus lit against a mostly black backdrop, which makes for fascinating portraits of daily street life.
Some conversation ensued while we were viewing the images about the laws governing the use of a person’s likeness in such photographs without their permission/knowledge. And oddly enough, one of DiCorcia’s subjects sued him for exactly that reason.
2005’s Nussenzweig v. DiCorcia pitted the photographer against retired diamond merchant Erno Nussenzweig with Nussenzweig claiming the photo violated his privacy rights under New York’s Civil Rights Law, which prohibits the use of a person’s likeness, without consent, “for advertising or for purposes of trade.”
Despite the fact that DiCorcia sold ten original edition prints of the photograph for $20,000-30,000 each, the court ruled in favor of DiCorcia and the gallery that initially showed the photographs, saying that the defendants’ uses of Nussenzweig’s likeness were not commercial - this was artistic expression (and therefor protected by the 1st Amendment.)
It’s interesting to me that the court is deciding/defining what constitutes “art.”
The fine print: many thanks to the ICA, Joseph, Mrs. Blankenship, and Wikipedia for helping me think through this.
Fascinating. Thanks.
said Patrick Born
at 11:18am on Monday
Awesome write-up. But I wonder why his selling them for $30k apiece didn’t falling under “trade”.
said Jason Windsor
at 12:28pm on Monday
They were limited edition (only 10, and never to be reprinted) so that is apparently considered “art” by the court, hence my closing statement; I find it odd that the court system is the one drawing the lines between art and commerce, especially when we’re talking about $200,000-300,000 of art.
said Joshua
The minute you sell a work of art, art and commerce have diverged. I guess what the court was deciding was how much commerce is permissable. But even then, they’re only decided quantity, not cost. If he had sold 300,000 postcards at a dollar apiece, would it have then been commerce? Even though it was the same amount of money?
said Jason Windsor
at 1:52pm on Monday
I suggest that the reason for court ruling in favor of diCorcia was the fact that he used artificial lighting and overall artificial setup to produce the photo, which turned the simple “likeliness” into a “work of art”. People don’t buy such a photograph for $30K only because of a senior man’s likeliness caught on them, but because of how it is caught - light, expression, framing - these have nothing to do with likeliness. IMHO, only with the artist’s work.
said Denis
at 8:34am on Monday