The website NYCPHOTORIGHTS.COM, which covered the Stuyvesant Town photo controversy via Lux Living's blog, managed to get a response from Stuyvesant Town (the Management Office?) that appears to clarify the matter:
"Personal photography is permitted at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. After receiving a number of inquiries, we circled back with our staff to make sure everyone is clear on this. Thanks and have a nice weekend."
From the looks of this, the following possibilities exist:
1) Stuy Town security didn't understand a new directive from the Management Office and assumed that personal photography was not permitted in Stuyvesant Town by residents. The directive, if it exists, may have had to do with use of the property by professional photographers for commercial purposes. In such case, a permit is indeed needed.
OR:
2) Stuyvesant Town backed down from their original directive, which security got correct, when they saw the online outrage and possible protests--and the illegality of having such a rule.
My feeling is that number one is the more correct assumption, as I can't believe that Tishman Speyer would be that stupid to ban residents from taking photographs in the complex.
Well, I think it's the second one. Number 2. How appropriate. I don't think it's their stupidity. I think it's controlling and they wanted to avoid further embarrassment and thought they could intimidate everyone. All the photographs of the mess TS has made of ST and PCV are true, as you know. There was no misunderstanding by the toy cops. TS had to back down because this action was as embarrassing as the photos. They circled back? Please. A one-finger salute to Robbie and his thugs.
ReplyDeleteI think it's based on the commercial photography issue.
ReplyDeleteI'd bet dollars to donuts (Security will put up the donuts) that the spate of recent photo spreads in the Post, and the department store ads were done without permission. Especially noteworthy were those unbelievably trashy photos of college kids huddled in the compactor doorway and stairwell, not images I'd want to market.
Met Life had always banned commercial projects without permission and ST/PCV was never, I repeat never seen in advertisements.
Met did however allow several feature films (The Marrying Kind, Three Days of the Condor and The Harder They Fall) and TV series (Kojak, Naked City) to be shot, mostly in PCV.
Believe me, it's the second one. The second one is perfectly in line with Stuy Town's many unethical measures it has taken to get rid of rent stabilized tenants and attract market raters with bigger bucks. Many of those measures were clumsily stupid (and unethical, obvious even to them). They clearly wanted to stop any negative photographs to appear on the internet (they told me so on the phone), so it's no surprise that they'd be ignorant enough to try to implement an illegal policy to that end.
ReplyDeleteI hate to be a jaded cynic, but I'm of the opinion that No. 2 is closer to the truth. I would suspect that any such "directive" was most likely drafted to address only commercial photography (like the grotesque magazine "spreads" that have been shot on the property); however, I have no doubt that security were given instructions that had the practical effect of making them be overzealous in hopes of suppressing the number of photos that are clearly not commercial in nature and that make their way onto the internet, to the continued embarrassment of T/S.
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