Canada's most controversial photo: here it is

This photo changed Quebec law

The photo at left was taken by Gilbert Duclos of Pascale Claude Aubry, 17, sitting on the steps of a Scotiabank in Montreal in 1988.

It went on the cover of a magazine called Vice Versa, which sold 772 copies.

The unwilling model did not give her consent and sued for $10,000.

The photographer Aubry countered by offering an amount that he would have paid her had she modeled for the shot.

The case went through various courts all the way to the Supreme Court. She justified the $10,000 she demanded by citing the following damage:

Q. Did that photo cause you any difficulties?

A. Some difficulties; people laughed at me.

Q. People, who are these people?

A My friends, the people at school.

Q. The people at school?

A. Uh‑huh.

Every judge along the way was pretty skeptical of her damages and she only got $2,000 in the end of the legal proceedings that must have cost a large amount.

Some Supremos such as top judge Antonio Lamer rejected her claim. Since that decision street photogs have been under chill and the world has suffered by the self censorship.

As for Duclos, he made a documentary about the experience and still urges photographers to go ahead and take chances because the alternative is that we'll have no historical view of our era in the future.   
That decision, of course, preceded the internet and digital cameras which have seen a massive proliferation in the sharing of interesting photos on sites such as Facebook The world is a massively different place and a new ethos reigns.

Duclos

The Aubry decision has been cited in subsequent suits, in 2002 Ontario-based Richard West put some photos he took of Quebec naturists in Virtually magazine, that resulted in a $93,000 lawsuit but a judge only awarded the palintiffs $6,000.

In 2010 Alain Goulet, a prison guard at Bordeaux Beach, sued the Gazette for $50,000 for publishing a photo of him at work in January 2008. The court awarded him $10,000.

Conversely on April 23, 2012 Quebec Court Judge Armando Aznar tossed out a suit demanding $4,999,999.99 laid by Paul Lepage, who complained that he could be seen and identified in an outdoor photo published in Le Plateau magazine because Lepage wasn't the main feature of the picture.