A French photographer is in trouble for violation of privacy over a picture showing President Emmanuel Macron in swimming trunks on holiday in the Mediterranean. Paris prosecutor’s office said on Sunday that the matter is under investigation.
The photo was among the paparazzi shots published by the Voici gossip magazines in August 2020 that reportedly irked President Macron. Some of the pictures displayed the 43 year-old president while on holiday at the Bregancon fort, relaxing with his wife and other family members on a boat while he was in his swim suit. Other showed the president riding a jet ski while bare-chested but had a life jacket.
A French radio called Europe1 reported that the president and his wife Brigitte had filed a criminal complaint for invasion of privacy. The photographer identified as Thibault Daliphard, told AFP he had been summoned to appear at a police station near his village. The photographer said that he was surprised with the president’s reaction saying that the jet-ski photo showed a ‘a young, dynamic president who who looks almost Kennedyesque and this was flattering.
He added that past French leaders always posed for photographs on holiday at Bregancon fort, starting with Charles Pompidou and Valery Giscard in the 19770s. But while recent presidents such as Macron continued with the same tradition, photographers have tried their best to capture them in their privacy moments. Macron however decided to avoid the long lens of the paparazzi and he had the fort endowed with a pool at a a cost of $40,000, but he later said that he preferred the sea.