
Philip-Lorca diCorcia has won in a privacy case brought against him by one of the subjects of his Heads series in which he covertly photographed passerbys on Times Square in New York. When Mr. Nussenzweig saw his portrait he sued the artist and Pace for exhibiting and publishing the portrait without permission and profiting from it financially and also argued that use of the photograph interfered with his constitutional right to practice his religion, which prohibits the use of graven images. In New York right-to-privacy laws prohibit the unauthorized use of a person's likeness for commercial purposes, but permit it if the likeness is considered art. Gallery Hopper raises some issues with the criteria used in court to prove that the image was art, namely exhibition in a gallery; sale of limited edition prints; and publication in an artist's monograph which seem to define art into a specifically gallery based commercial practice. Interestingly the NY times articles cites Walker Evans NY subway portaits as a classic example of covert street photography, a practice that would, of course, be banned today, not for privacy reasons but under the "war on terror".

