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incidents
This page highlights unauthorised photography incidents
in Australia and New Zealand, including prosecutions by
government representatives and action by celebrities.
It covers -
introduction
The following paragraphs cover selected incidents of unauthorised
photography and video, along with debate about the appropriateness
or mere feasibility of litigation.
The coverage is not exhaustive. Selection does not involve
a view on the guilt, innocence or
judgement or protagonists. Instead it illustrates
use of offensive behaviour law, disagreement between courts
and police or other officials regarding law, and non-recognition
of claims for 'celebrity rights' or personality rights.
panics
Photographer Concetta Petrillo, later an art history lecturer
at Edith Cowan University, was charged in 1995 under s
320(6) of the Criminal Code Act Compilation Act 1913
with 'indecently recording a person under 13', ie photographing
her sons - sans figleaf - in classical poses.
She was acquitted of the charge in 2003, after two years
of preliminary hearings and substantial expense. The case
is discussed in Alison Archer's 1997 'Crossing The Fine
Line: The case of Concetta Petrillo' in 18 Artline
3.
Petrillo has gone on to win several major prizes, including
the Mandorla
Art Award (Australia's most significant themed contemporary
religious art award) in 2007.
The case was echoed in the UK during 2001 with calls for
prosecution of photographer Tierney Gearon
over an exhibition in the Saatchi Gallery. (UK newsreader
Julia Somerville was arrested when she sought to collect
domestic snaps that showed her daughter naked in the bath.)
In 2005
Peter Mackenzie was fined
$500 (and reportedly had his mobile phone destroyed) for
unauthorised photographs of topless women on Coogee Beach
in 2004. The incident fuelled debate about development
of 'phonecam' or 'voyeurcam' enactments and announcement
by local government bodies that photography on beaches,
parks and other locations would be illegal. Expectations
of privacy at the beach are explored in Kelley Burton's
2006 PLPR article
'Erosion at the Beach: Privacy Rights not just Sand'.
Later in 2005 university students Diwakar Gaur and Rattanbir
Singh were charged for photographing
topless girls at Coogee beach using mobile phones. Police
prosecutors had presumably been encouraged by the Mackenzie
judgement but later withdrew all charges and the cases
was formally dismissed
by magistrate Lee Gilmour.
The same year saw furore over publication by Brisbane
resident Paul Bartram on a personal site of unauthorised
images and videos of Queensland children. Bartram denied
any links to child pornography and the site reportedly
did not feature nude images.
It however resulted in suggestions that there was a need
to extend existing law to deal with "situations where
the photographs of a child are, of themselves, not offensive"
and amendments to the state Criminal Code 1899
through the Justice & Other Legislation Amendment
Act 2005 expanded the existing 'Indecent Acts' through
for example restrictions on 'upskirting'. The changes
do not prohibit all photography on beaches and other public
places.
A year later award winning professional
photographer Rex Dupain was held in police custody and
had his Hasselblad camera seized for attempting to photograph
sleeping backpackers on Bondi beach. His father, the great
Max Dupain (1911-1992), had gained fame for an iconic
1937 photo of a person sleeping on the beach. The four
police officers involved in the 2006 detention were reportedly
mystified by the $8,000 professional camera.
Dupain commented
We
sit at home and watch the close-up of people's lives
on disturbing television reality shows but someone taking
pictures at the beach is seen as a threat.
In
2005 the
New Zealand Court of Appeal upheld conviction
under s 4(1)(a) of the Summary Offences Act 1981
of a defendant who had engaged in
surreptitious photography of schoolgirls walking along
a public street.
The defendant was initially convicted and discharged without
penalty in the Dunedin District Court (Police v Rowe,
Dunedin, 20 February 2004): the
photographs were not "intrinsically offensive"
as they depicted an unexceptional scene that people could
see on a public street but covert photography from Rowe's
parked van only of schoolgirls rendered
his taking those images as
behaving in an offensive manner in a public place.
On appeal
(R
v Rowe, CA 374/04, 18 April 2005)
the court implied that if he had been a paparazzi
might not have been convicted because they would have
had a "legitimate purpose" in taking photographs.
The defendant in Rowe was subsequently arrested and convicted
for "furtive" photography of young women in
a university library.
celebrities
In 2006
'celebrity photographer' Jamie Fawcett faced action
after allegedly trailing
actress Nicole Kidman
and possessing a listening device outside
her
Darling Point mansion. She separately gained
an intervention order (later revoked) over stalking claims
against Fawcett.
The same year saw former ALP leader Mark Latham charged
with assault, malicious damage & stealing after a
journalist snapped him and his children leaving a fast
food restaurant. He subsequently pleaded guilty to a charge
of malicious damage; the charges of assault and stealing
(reflecting damage to the camera) were dropped. Latham
claimed that intensive media coverage was tantamount to
stalking.
strangers
In 2003 the court in Grosse v Purvis (discussed
here and here)
awarded damages of $178,000 after the defendant stalked
the claimant through recurrent photographs, calls and
appearance within sight of the plaintiff.
In 2007 MBA student Takuya
Muto was found
guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court after
taking upskirt photographs
at the Australian Tennis Open and subsequently secretly
videoing five females as they showered at a backpackers'
hostel. Muto pleaded guilty to charges of stalking, illegal
use of an optical device and offensive behaviour. He was
sentenced to serve a minimum of two months' jail of an
overall two year sentence.
In 2007 a Forestville (NSW) man was charged with two counts
of filming for indecent purposes and two counts of installing
a device to film for indecent purposes, after allegedly
using his mobile phone to film a woman as she showered
in her Sydney home. She had noticed his phone on her window
sill.
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