Not-so-private lives

Saw a story last night on WNBC-Channel 4 that really piqued my interest. It was about the artist Yasmine Chatila, who takes photographs of people — viewed without their knowledge through exposed windows — and then distorts them to create her art.

Her "Stolen Moments" are now on display at Edelman Arts in Manhattan. The TV station, of course, was primarily concerned with the privacy issue, raised in a man-on-the-street report with predictably mixed responses.

It's an intriguing question. Since Chatila manipulates the images so as to protect the identities of her subjects (and thus, herself), she is not, in a sense, recording their actual lives without their consent. Then again, there is an element of voyeurism — which is probably inherent in all art based on observation.

Still, there's something particularly creepy about spying on people for entertainment, à la James Stewart's laid-up shutterbug in "Rear Window." I bet the very arts lovers who'll be turning out to see Chatila's work would be horrified to be her unwitting muses.

There is another issue here, raised by one of the interviews in the news segment: What about the tacit cooperation of those who kiss, undress or perform other generally private acts with the shades up? Aren't they in a sense inviting the prying eye?

Well, they are. And I couldn't help but think of Tiger Woods' recent troubles as I saw these blurry photos, so reminiscent of Edward Hopper's poetic paintings of intimate aloneness. If you don't want people to know your business, you have to be very careful not to straddle the line between the private and the public. The minute you stand by a window naked — even if you're on the 50th floor — the minute you speed out of your driveway, or create a squeaky-clean persona for the purpose of making money off consumers, you're no longer in the cocoon of the private realm.

As I wrote about President Clinton at the time of Monica-gate, private acts tend to have very public consequences.