WHAT'S A PICTURE WORTH? -- HE WANTS $1.6 MIL
June 26, 2005 -- The Orthodox Jewish man in this photograph wants $1.6 million from the famous photographer who snapped it without consent.
Erno Nussenzweig claims he walked into an elaborate artistic trap set on a Times Square sidewalk by international photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia in 2001.
DiCorcia rigged strobe lights to scaffolding and trained his lens on an "X" he taped to the sidewalk. From 20 feet away, he took shots of Nussenzweig and thousands of other unsuspecting subjects. Later that year, diCorcia exhibited this image under the title "#13" at a Pace Wildenstein gallery show called "Heads" in Chelsea. The photographer said multiple prints of Nussenzweig's picture sold for about $20,000 each. The picture also was published in "Heads," a book that sold several thousand copies, diCorcia said.
Now Nussenzweig, a retired diamond merchant from New Jersey, is snapping back at diCorcia — and at the right of photographers to secretly grab pictures on the street and sell them — by suing him, Pace Wildenstein, publisher Pace/MacGill and unnamed distributors and sellers of the image and the book.
"We claim that to take someone's picture without their consent is bad enough," said Jay Goldberg, Nussenzweig's lawyer. "But to then hang the picture in galleries, put it in books and sell it around the city without telling the person or obtaining permission is unfair and outrageous."
"It's a beautiful picture," Goldberg added. "But why should this guy make money off of your face?"
Nussenzweig declined comment through his lawyer. He claims in his lawsuit he learned of his portrait from a friend this year.
DiCorcia, 52, called the case "ridiculous" and insisted he did nothing wrong. He said the lawsuit could curb the freedom of other artists capturing the city's street life.
"It is a fundamental right, and I will defend it," he said. "I consider myself at the end of a long line of photographers who have done what is now being described as a malicious criminal act."
Goldberg pointed to state privacy law declaring it illegal to use a person's photograph "for trade" without having obtained their permission.
Nussenzweig's lawsuit claims "severe mental anguish, emotional distress, humiliation and embarrassment."
DiCorcia said he doesn't understand why Nussenzweig is so incensed.
"My intentions were nothing but honorable," diCorcia said. "If he is as other-worldly as his face makes him out to be, why would he care?"
from the NY Post
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