As revealed by aww.com.au yesterday, Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill is refusing to accept any money from the sale of the photograph, which he said was “a source of humiliation for the Duchess” that put her “in a position of embarrassment”.
Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill in Winmalee in October last year.
Diane Morel, a Blue Mountains travel agent and amateur photographer, unintentionally took the photograph while attending Prince William and his wife’s visit to the bushfire-ravaged town of Winmalee last month.
After discovering it on her camera’s memory card, she sold it for a rumoured £100,000 ($180,000) to major German tabloid newspaper Bild, which sparked worldwide news headlines earlier this week.
It was then sold again through a third party agent for about $1000 to News Corp Australia’s The Daily Telegraph. It is likely Ms Morel would lose a significant percentage of money paid for the photograph to the agent who negotiated the sales.
The British press has refused to publish the photograph, which they have condemned as an invasion of privacy.
Ms Morel, 47, who is overseas on business, has reportedly said she’d decided to donate the money raised to the Blue Mountains Bushfire Mayoral Relief Fund.
But Blue Mountains City Council denied it would accept money from the “offending photograph”.
Councillor Greenhill said the Duchess of Cambridge had been “extremely generous” in her visit to the Blue Mountains and that the city council did “not support any form of exploitation of this visit”. The photograph promoted “sexualisation of all women”, he said.
“Notwithstanding the charitable intent of the photographer, any donation made to the Blue Mountains Bushfire Mayoral Relief Fund sourced from the proceeds of the sale of this photograph, will not be accepted, irrespective of the monetary value of that donation,” he said.
“This position is informed by a deep respect for the Duchess of Cambridge and the strong view that the offending photograph is a source of humiliation for the Duchess, as an individual and a woman; promotes the distasteful and gratuitous sexualisation of all women; trivialises the impact of the October 2013 Blue Mountains bushfires; and embarrasses the community of the City of Blue Mountains.”
Ms Morel was affected by last year’s bushfires, which came within 100-metres of her home, her father told The Weekly, and she has friends whose homes were destroyed.
But the mayor and council were “strongly of the view that the Duchess is entitled to her privacy and dignity.”
