(NY Post: Chad Rachman)
Photographer Arne Svenson (above) lives at this building at 125 Watt St. and takes pictures from his window, like this unflattering shot of a neighbor in 475 Greenwich St. (NY Post: Chad Rachman)
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Residents of a luxury Tribeca building are furious over a new photo exhibit in a Chelsea art gallery — because they had no idea they were the subjects on display.
From his second-floor apartment across the street, artist Arne Svenson secretly took photos of his neighbors through their oversized windows as they engaged in such personal things as bending over cleaning, taking naps and carrying sleeping kids to bed.
The shots — which don’t show full faces — are now being sold for up to $7,500 each at the Julie Saul Gallery in an exhibition called “The Neighbors,” which opened Saturday.
The largest print on display is 5 feet by 2 feet.
Residents of the Greenwich Street building — where penthouses fetch up to $6 million — soon caught wind of their involuntary modeling, and are fuming.
“This is about kids. If he’s waiting there for hours with his camera, who knows what kind of footage he has. I can recognize items from my daughter’s bedroom,” said one resident who appears in a Svenson photograph.
Another parent, Clifford Finn, who would not say if he was in the exhibit, said, “A grown man should not be able to photograph kids in their rooms with a telephoto lens.
“You can argue artistic license all you want, but that’s really the issue here. I’m sorry, but I’m really bothered by this.”
A third resident said that some of the people featured in the exhibit — especially those with kids — are considering legal action.
Svenson, 60 — who once had an exhibit featuring photos of sock puppets — is unapologetic.
“For my subjects, there is no question of privacy,” he said in a statement accompanying the exhibit. “They are performing behind a transparent scrim on a stage of their own creation with the curtain raised high. The neighbors don’t know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs.
“I am not unlike the birder, quietly waiting for hours, watching for the flutter of a hand or a movement of a curtain as an indication that there is life within.”
Experts in privacy law said the residents will have more luck in a civil case rather than a misdemeanor criminal proceeding, because their faces aren’t fully visible.