From correspondents in Geneva
April 14, 2008 06:05am
A DOCTOR running hospitals in Cambodia said today he had refused a
donation raised by selling a picture of France's first lady in the
****, because Cambodians disapproved of exploiting female flesh for
money.
Swiss paediatrician Beat Richner, head of a children's medical care
group, said he had turned down an offer of $US91,000 ($97,700) raised
at a New York auction last week of the 1993 picture of Italian ex-
model Carla Bruni, now married to President Nicolas Sarkozy.
"My decision was taken out of respect for our patients and their
mothers," he said in an interview with Le Matin Dimanche.
"Accepting money obtained from exploitation of the female body would
be perceived as an insult."
In Cambodia "use of ****ity is not understood in the way it is in the
West".
He did not wish his institution, the Kantha Bopha Children's Hospital
Association, "to be involved in the media exploitation of Madame
Bruni".
"The idea behind this gift was to get publicity for the auction and
the photographer," Dr Richner was also quoted as saying. "It was a way
of using us."
Michel Comte, the Swiss photographer who took the full-frontal picture
of Bruni posing ****d, was quoted in the Swiss press last month as
saying he had thousands more images of her, including some much more
explicit.
Several British newspapers published the shot of the first lady as she
and Mr Sarkozy arrived in Britain for a two-day state visit last
month.
Mr Comte had persuaded the seller, German collector Gert Elfering, to
offer the money through the sale to a humanitarian cause, said Le
Matin Dimanche. The picture was auctioned at Christie's in New York.
The money will now instead be donated to a Swiss research institute
developing the recycling of used water into fresh drinking water in
poor countries, said Le Matin Dimanche.
"I have other **** photographs of Carla far more explicit, but I would
never sell them," Mr Comte was last month quoted as telling Le Matin.
He said he had taken thousands of photos of Bruni in the 10 years they
worked together. The auctioned **** was taken at the end of a session
for Italian Vogue magazine.
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