An outdoor photo exhibit is going up on Saturday, May 13, in downtown Hartford, and the people pictured have no idea they will be part of an art installation.
They may not like it. But that’s a risk the artist, Paolo Cirio, is willing to take. The photos are on the internet anyway, so those images belong to the world.
“On the internet, it’s not quite clear what the boundary is between public and private,” Cirio said.
Cirio, a native of Italy who has lived in New York City for about five years, has installed “Street Ghosts” in about two dozen cities around the world, including Paris, New York City, Berlin, Montreal, Haifa, Sydney and Hong Kong. Real Art Ways invited Cirio to Hartford, to complement its exhibit “Nothing to Hide? Surveillance & Privacy.”
To compile “Street Ghosts,” Cirio scans Google Street View, looking for pictures of people in urban settings. He chooses several, prints out those photos life-sized and then pastes them up at the locations where the photos were taken.
The photos stay up for a few days, or weeks, or months. “It’s a temporary thing. That’s why they are ghosts. They appear and disappear and may come back any time,” he said. “Ghosts come back from the past and appear and disappear again.”
The seven photos he will install in Hartford were taken in 2011.
All of Cirio’s art projects focus on the many questions surrounding the internet’s tendency to change perceptions of privacy. “Where are things more public and where are they more private?” Cirio asked. “Who can claim ownership over that kind of material? Who has the right to make these photographs and to exploit them commercially? Is this information public or not?”
Cirio said reactions have been mixed in the cities where he has worked. “Some people freak out about it and say it’s … a provocative project,” he said. “Other people say, ‘no, I don’t care, it’s OK, it’s just a picture of someone.'”
Sometimes people have stolen the photographs from their installation locations. That doesn’t bother Cirio. “The point is to engage the public in this project,” he said.
Cirio said “Street Ghosts” is a learning experience for him, too. “Some people think everything must be transparently public or private. Some don’t distinguish between the two. People are confused. I think it really depends on the context,” he said. “I don’t think it can be too generalized. There is a lack of legislation and regulation. It will take a few years. We are not at that point yet. The internet is very new, after all.”
But he doesn’t feel that “Street Ghosts” invades anyone’s privacy. “Why would you complain about having a picture on the wall for a couple of days while it’s forever on the internet?” he said.
“STREET GHOSTS” will be installed in various places on Main, Asylum, Pearl and Trumbull streets in Hartford on Saturday, May 13, starting at 1 p.m. They will be up until June 19. In the event of rain, Paolo Cirio will install the works on Sunday, May 14. “Nothing to Hide? Surveillance & Privacy” will be at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St. in Hartford, until June 19. realartways.org.
