This Week's Photo

Head Series

Philip-Lorca diCorcia
2000

DiCorcia's Head Series was made by placing flash lighting on construction scaffolding above a busy New York street, out of sight of the passers-by below.

The movements of the pedestrians activated the flash, at which moment diCorcia photographed the illuminated stranger with a long-lens camera.

The resulting images show people who do not know that they are being photographed and so do not compose themselves for their 'portraits'.

In 2006, a New York trial court issued a ruling in a case involving one of his photographs.


diCorcia had set up elaborate strobe rigs on a New York City street corner and had photographed people walking down the street, including Emo Nussenzweig, an Orthodox Jew who objected on religious grounds to deCorcia's publishing in an artistic exhibition a photograph taken of him without his permission.


The photo's subject argued that his privacy and religious rights had been violated by both the taking and publishing of the photograph of him. The judge dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the photograph taken of Nussenzweig on a street is art - not commerce - and therefore is protected by the First Amendment.

Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische ruled that the photo of Nussenzweig—a head shot showing him sporting a scraggly white beard, a black hat and a black coat—was art, even though the photographer sold 10 prints of it at $20,000 to $30,000 each.


The judge ruled that New York courts have "recognized that art can be sold, at least in limited editions, and still retain its artistic character. . . .First Amendment protection of art is not limited to only starving artists. A profit motive in itself does not necessarily compel a conclusion that art has been used for trade purposes."