ABSTRACT
For his series “Heads,” the photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia rigged a strobe light on to scaffolding in Times Square and, with a very long lens, took photographs of pedestrians walking by. The passers-by did not know they were being photographed and diCorcia did not obtain a release from any of his artistic subjects. When one subject, Erno Nussenzweig, learned that his portrait, “Head No. 13, 2000,” was being sold for upwards of $30,000 in a Manhattan art gallery he sued diCorcia and the gallery for damages, claiming that the photograph constituted a failure of respect. Did diCorcia disrespect Nussenzweig by taking and exhibiting “Head No. 13, 2000”? Can the relevant conception of disrespect be captured by the standard accounts of privacy or respect for persons found in the philosophical literature? How should we understand the nature of and limits to the respect artists owe their photographic subjects? After considering and rejecting alternative accounts which characterize this respect in terms of privacy or a right to control one’s image, I sketch and defend my own account of the respect photographers owe to photographic subjects.
