Legal assistance with portrait rights

Questioner

Last year my toddler was photographed (without me knowing) during a holiday in our city. That is not strange, because there are photographers walking around all day taking pictures of you, you get a receipt and a week later you can buy that picture for a fee. The photo I am talking about now was not taken by such a photographer, but by an amateur photographer from an association in our city. Last Monday this photo, you see half of me with my toddler on my arm, my toddler is fully in the picture, was in the big regional newspaper. An exhibition is announced in the library about people during this holiday. This photo also hangs in the library at this exhibition. I knew nothing about this, don't know the photographer and am not really pleased that this photo is in the newspaper and hanging in the exhibition without my husband's and my permission. What are my rights and can I, for example, request compensation or something similar?

Lawyer

In your case, there could be a violation of portrait rights. After all, your daughter is fully featured in the photo. You did not give permission for the photo to be published. If portrait rights have indeed been violated, you are entitled to compensation. The use of someone's portrait in a publication is in principle permitted, unless the person depicted has a 'reasonable interest' against its use. That reasonable interest is usually privacy. Incidentally, privacy is not absolute: if the publicist also has an interest, then the two interests must be weighed against each other. Consider, for example, the situation in which the photo has news value. In your case, I wonder whether the importance of publication outweighs the importance of your daughter's privacy.