Michael Wolf photo exhibit may breach privacy law, expert warns

Legal concerns have been raised that award-winning German photographer Michael Wolf violated the privacy of Hong Kong residents with his new series, "Window Watching", in which he used a telephoto zoom lens to photograph people through their high-rise apartment windows.

The snapshots capture intimate moments in cramped flats. They show a woman helping a child with homework, a girl lying on a bed talking on the phone, a family watching television together and a man doing push-ups in his living room. In a few of the photographs, the subjects' faces are clearly visible. In others, they are blurred or obscured by shadows and objects.

A barrister, who preferred to remain anonymous, said: "Since those photos have already been published on the internet, those people have had their privacy grievously invaded and have no practical way of getting compensation. Theoretically, they can go to court and seek damages for breach of privacy, but an average person may not have the money to commence legal proceedings."

Wolf, who has won two first-prize awards from World Press Photo and lived in Hong Kong since 1994, recently posted 16 sample images from the "Window Watching" series on his website. In the past week, websites including Shanghaiist and Trend Hunter have republished them and the images have also been uploaded onto personal blog sites and on YouTube.

Wolf told the South China Morning Post he was in the process of completing the series to exhibit and publish in a book. He refused to comment on breach of privacy concerns. He did not say whether he had received the consent of the people in the photographs to publish their images.

Wolf has sparked debate about voyeuristic photography in the past. One of his previous projects, "Transparent City", included images of people inside apartments and office buildings in Chicago. While living in Paris, he used Google Maps' "Street View" feature to gather images of people on the street.