Privacy and the pictures: the photographed and filmed (women) who forged a right to privacy in the United States (1880-1950)

© 2013 Dr. Jessica LakeThis thesis presents interdisciplinary research into the ways in which the 19th century technologies of photography and cinema gave birth to a ‘right to privacy’ in the United States and an investigation into how and why this happened. Such an investigation necessitates a gendered analysis, as my research suggests that during the period from 1880 to 1950, cases claiming ‘a right to privacy’ involving film (still and moving) were, more often than not, brought by women. The proliferation of images that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of developments in photography and cinema caused new potential harms to individuals (particularly women), which existing laws (such as copyright, defamation and breach of confidence) were inadequate to address. Drawing upon extensive original research in film and legal archives across the United States, this thesis demonstrates that it was women who forged a ‘right to privacy’ in the United States by claiming control and ownership over images (still and moving) of their faces and bodies. At a time when they still lacked a range of civil and political rights, women asserted the right to control the circulation and publication of their images, first, to prevent themselves from being reduced to nameless, ‘pretty’, objects; second, to protest the transformation of their bodies into spectacles of ‘monstrosity’; third, to limit their exposure on the big screen to the mass ‘gaze’ of audiences; fourth, to control the development of their careers as models, dancers and actors; and fifth, to reclaim their life stories from exploitation by film studios. My interdisciplinary thesis introduces these important contestations in a new account of film history in the United States and also offers an alternative explanation of ‘a right to privacy’ within the law, one informed by a consideration of women’s (and some men’s) historical, cultural and embodied experience