The Neighbors #11, 2012, image courtesy of Arne Svenson’s website
Photographer Arne Svenson’s right to creep was once again affirmed by the courts last week. The ruling stood by a lower court’s 2013 decision that Svenson had a right to create and sell photographs that he took of his unsuspecting neighbors at home using a telephoto lens. His series, “The Neighbors,” depicts beautiful and quiet moments of domestic life through the neighbors’ window which, though their faces are obscured, they understandably took issue with. The judge in last week’s decision, Judge Dianne T. Renwick, reluctantly upheld the ruling, calling the artist’s methods “disturbing” and “intrusive,” but passed the buck on to higher courts to revisit this conflict of the right to privacy and the right to self expression.
Svenson claimed he wouldn’t be bothered if he were in his neighbor’s position. But one has to wonder where the line can be drawn in the era of drones, doxing, and hacktivism. How would he feel if another artist were to hack his dick pics?
Neighbors #1, 2012, courtsey of Arne Svenson’s website
This isn’t the first time the courts have stood by a photographer’s First Amendment rights. Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s 2001 series “Heads” caught candid portraits of passersby in the streets of New York through a system of hidden cameras and automatic flashes, prompting one unwitting subject to file a lawsuit. The New York Supreme Court ruled that diCorcia’s right to self expression superseded the plaintiff’s privacy rights then as well, despite the plaintiff’s appeals through his religious beliefs; as an Orthodox Jew, he claimed diCorcia’s work to offend the Torah’s prohibition of graven images.
The Neighbors #17, 2012, image courtesy of Arne Svenson’s website
Neighbors #8, 2012, image courtsey of Arne Svenson’s website
The Neighbors #2, 2012, image courtesy of Arne Svenson’s website
Neighbors #16, 2012, image courtsey of Arne Svenson’s website
Neighbors #15, 2012, image courtsey of Arne Svenson’s website
