[Reminded by a news story that we’ve reached the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, I recalled that I’d written something about it a few years later, which I published in August 2000 in a bi-weekly column I then ran in a local giveaway newspaper, the Star-Reporter chain, which had a circulation of […]
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The death of Princess Diana has so far had one potentially beneficial consequence: it has foregrounded, brought to international attention, and sparked serious and widespread public debate over the question of the right to privacy in relation to the behavior of photographers in public places. […] That a capitalistic impulse is at the core of this object-fetishism should by now be clear. Photo-Realism is emblematic of the jealously-guarded power of “serious artists” to convert a financially valueless image into a financially valuable object. […] [Toward the tail end of my decade as the photography critic for the New York Observer I had the opportunity to review the Museum of Modern Art’s celebration of Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills” series, a complete set of which they had recently acquired and were showing for the first time, in an exhibition sponsored […] |
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Diana’s Death, Revisited (3)
Photographers have rights, which must be identified and protected. They also enjoy privileges that can be withdrawn at any time by widespread public agreement and legislation. The subjects of photographs also have rights, which also must be identified and protected. And some of those rights of subjects absolutely supersede the rights of photographers. […]