New York photographer defends right to shoot people secretly in their apartments
New York photographer defends his right to capture unaware neighbours through their apartment windows using a telephoto lens
Space-starved New Yorkers might know better than to expect privacy in their glass-and-steel residential boxes. Yet, even by Manhattan standards, an exhibit by a photographer who used a zoom lens to secretly photograph his neighbours napping and eating has caused a citywide stir - and two legal actions, so far.
Photographer Arne Svenson says he started the project after inheriting a telephoto lens from a friend. He began taking pictures of the apartments opposite his own Tribeca home in 2012.
Those images are now on show - and for sale at prices of up to US$7,500 per photo - at a Chelsea gallery, where they prompted a legal complaint from Martha and Matthew Foster, parents of the young children featured in two of his photographs.
The Fosters said the pictures raised concerns about the safety of their children as well as fears that they "must keep their shades drawn at all hours of the day in order to avoid telephoto photography by a neighbour."
In the latest development, Svenson is fighting back. On Wednesday, his attorney filed a motion calling for the New York county court to throw out the Fosters' complaint. The motion argues that the pictures are not illegal and are protected under an artist's freedom of expression under First Amendment rights.
Svenson is no longer commenting on the controversy, but says in his exhibition notes: "For my subjects, there is no question of privacy: The neighbours don't know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs."
The photographs themselves are both abstract and specific, capturing mundane but intimate moments of domestic modern life. All are carefully framed to avoid revealing the full faces of their subjects.