“Heads” series by Philip Lorca Dicorcia

And like most artists worth their salt, diCorcia doesn’t give much thought to whether what he’s doing is legal or not – much to his lawyers delight, I’m sure.  Of course, the most notable was a result of his ‘Heads’ series.  Placing lighting on a scaffolding on a busy New York street, diCorcia just captured people as they hurried through their lives – raw and unscripted, very different to the work that broke him.  ”Unsurprisingly, neither he nor his assistant ran after these people to get a model release and so, when the work was shown and received accolades one of the subjects, an elderly Orthodox Jewish man, sued on personal and religious grounds.  After three appeals, diCorcia won out, the court deciding that, although diCorcia was selling the pieces in the area 20 – 30k a piece, that they were still art and not pieces designed for commerce and thus protected under the first amendment protecting free speech.  Ironically, diCorcia conceded that he, himself, would probably not be too thrilled if the same were to happen to him, but the law allows it.”