A glass and steel building in Manhattan’s prime neighbourhood of Tribeca is pictured, as apartment residents in the building are fuming over a new exhibition of photographs in which they were pictured without their knowledge.
AFP/New York
Residents of a New York City apartment building are up in arms over an exhibition of candid photographs one of their neighbours took of them, without their knowledge or permission.
A gallery show - “The Neighbors” - of the pictures taken surreptitiously by American photographer Arne Svenson opened last week at the Julie Saul Gallery in lower Manhattan.
The images were taken by Svenson through the windows of his apartment building in lower Manhattan’s Tribeca neighbourhood, as he trained his lens on his on his unsuspecting neighbours.
They show Svenson’s neighbours, unawares, in various candid poses - bending, kneeling, carrying children. A press release on the gallery’s website said Svenson was intrigued by the idea of capturing “the daily activities of his downtown Manhattan neighbours as seen through his windows into theirs.”
“He was intrigued not only by the implied stories within the frame of the glass but also by the play of light upon the subjects, the shadows, the framing of the structure,” the statement said, adding that he “doesn’t photograph anything salacious or demeaning” and is “careful not to reveal identities.”
“Svenson is not photographing the people as specific, identifiable individuals, more as representations of humankind, of us,” the Chelsea gallery said.