Marc Adelman’s Stelen (Columns) (2007–11) was included in The Jewish Museum exhibition Composed: Identity, Politics, Sex (Dec. 23, 2011–June 30, 2012). The work comprises a set of photographs Adelman found on a gay dating website. Following a published review of the exhibition, the Museum received complaints from several people whose profile pictures were featured in Stelen. Their comments focused on privacy issues—the inclusion of their images in the artwork without their consent—and the possibility that as a result of being depicted publicly in the work they might be subject to significant anti-gay backlash. (See statement.) We have invited Marc Adelman and a range of experts to address some of the complex issues raised by the artwork.

If you would like to provide a response to any of these contributions, please do so in the comments section. We will select a representative sampling of responses for publication here. Anonymous responses will not be eligible for publication.

What are the ethical concerns for artists who appropriate images from the Internet? To what extent should artists consider privacy, the personal safety of their subjects, and First Amendment rights?

There are so many ways one could address your questions, but one thing that is important to this kind of artistic practice is the distinction between personal images and collective images and an understanding of how the subject in images shifts from the personal to collective depending on the context of their use. The specificity of an individual in an image, as well as the subject of that image, can change once the image crosses the threshold between personal digital space and the World Wide Web. Seen in the context of, say, a Google Image search, any image, no matter how personal or intimate, is unassignable and anonymous. Click to continue »

As clear as photographs may be, their use can turn unruly. One example: Marc Adelman’s Stelen (2007–11), an installation of 50 appropriated snapshots on view at The Jewish Museum before being withdrawn last summer. At issue: photos of men posing among the pillars of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial used as their profile pictures on GayRomeo.com, a European social community and dating site. The problem: like so many digital images that won’t stay put, as their context changed so did their meaning and impact. Click to continue »

What do men who post pictures of themselves in front of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial want to tell potential partners? There are probably as many answers to this question as there are profile pictures of this ilk, of which there appears to be a surprising number. We know this thanks to Marc Adelman’s Stelen (Columns), an art installation comprised of 50 photos that were found on the gay dating site PlanetRomeo. It’s Europe’s answer to Man Hunt. Click to continue »

Marc Adelman’s montage Stelen is filled with “cruel harmonies and stimulating rhythms,” as Edgard Varese described Stravinsky’s 1913 debut of The Rite of Spring. On the surface, the mounting and subsequent removal of Stelen by The Jewish Museum raises questions about expectations of privacy on the Internet, censorship, fair use, appropriation, commodification, and the failure to procure the consent of the men pictured, particularly given that they are citizens of many countries, some of whose laws and customs make the risk of “outing” a deadly one. Still, the law is a dull guide to the deeper, harder questions of aesthetics, the patrolling of sexuality, sacrilege, and art.  Click to continue »

It’s difficult to talk about on-line privacy without first acknowledging that the very idea is a fallacy. Regardless of what the law says, regardless of what agreements have been signed, and regardless of what we might prefer to believe, when an image enters the flow of data on the web, it is, by the very nature of the medium, no longer private. As photography makes the transition from the world of objects to one of free-floating information, it becomes the sole responsibility of a picture’s original owner to understand this. Those owners are the gatekeepers, and they alone are responsible for the consequences of cutting the ties of ownership. Click to continue »

If there ever was a semblance of privacy during the early days of the Internet, it was a tenuous one at best. Over the course of the last fifteen years, there has been a persistent disconnect between activity carried out online and the ostensible privacy that surrounds such activity. Longing for the last bastion of a “private life” online is at best an archaic gesture. The intimate minutiae that make up our lives are, to various degrees, out in plain sight and can be tracked down whether or not we like it. Furthermore, laboring under the assumption that one might momentarily escape the ubiquity of digitization simply by strolling down the street or riding public transportation is a gross misunderstanding of how we currently live. Click to continue »

The great power and appeal of the Internet is that it provides instant access to information. This is also its greatest danger—there is no delay between seeking and receiving and practically no effort involved in requisitioning words, images, and sounds that were created by another author. Among the many ethical pitfalls of such easy access are plagiarism, defamation, and the perpetuation of misinformation. The American right of free expression is legally necessary in civil terms but not always ethically supported or moral from a Jewish perspective. One may, for example, have a legal right to insult another person, but that does not make such words ethical. The most prominent Jewish prayer, the Amidah, concludes with a petition that God “guard my tongue from evil.” Judaism even teaches us not to praise other people excessively since this may elicit negative comments from others. Click to continue »