We tapped four visionaries -- Juergen Teller, The Raveonettes, Jennifer Lynch, and James Jean -- for their takes on surveillance. The works of art they created are, well, out of sight.

Above: Juergen Teller
“Ed with camera, Il Pellicano,” 2009.
Teller’s exhibition, Juergen Teller, Paradis, is on display at New York’s Lehmann Maupin gallery until October 17, 2009.

Fifteen years have passed since Jennifer Chambers Lynch released Boxing Helena, arguably the most problematic debut film of all time. It was originally slated to star Madonna as the mutilated object of a demented surgeon’s affection, but was later recast with Kim Basinger when Andrew Lloyd Webber threatened to revoke her starring-role in Evita. When Basinger later pulled out at the insistence of one of her handlers, a front-page court battle ensued, ending in the bankruptcy and eventual divorce of Basinger and then-husband Alec Baldwin. Lynch was only 23 when the backlash reached boiling point. She was unfairly attacked in the media as a hack, and worse, for being the hack whose father was cinematic icon David Lynch. Compelled to create Helena’s world of misplaced adulation and amputation by a car accident that destroyed her spine, she felt doubly punished when the film was released to frigid reviews and “audience venom.” After a series of life-changing events, Lynch sought refuge in the abuse of alcohol and drugs. Now sober, walking and demon-free, the controversial filmmaker comes out of hiding with this month’s deliciously amoral thriller Surveillance, a triumphant comeback in every sense of the word.