Photographer who performed naked shoot in China's Forbidden City sparks outrage

Wang Dong said he was ‘doing my work and did not affect anyone’

Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith
Monday 01 June 2015 10:10 BST
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The Forbidden City is now a major tourist attraction
The Forbidden City is now a major tourist attraction

A photographer has sparked outrage in China after he took photos of a naked model in the country’s Forbidden City in Beijing and posted them online.

Photographer Wang Dong took the pictures at the former imperial palace in Beijing while tourists roamed the Palace Museum, before posting them onto Chinese social networking site Sina Weibo and other blogging sites.

One of the images showed a naked woman straddling the head of a hornless dragon statue at the foot of the steps of the palace, while another showed a woman leaning onto an ancient wall with the underneath of her skirt exposed while tourists stood in the background. He told The Beijing News that “I was only doing my work and did not affect anyone,” the South China Morning Post reported.

But the pictures have sparked outrage online. People called the pictures shameless and said the photographer and his models’ actions profaned the historic relics.

The South China Morning Post reported that officials at the Palace Museum are yet to comment on the issue, adding that it is not clear whether the photographer had permission to perform the shoot or not.

It is now known whether Weibo is investigating the use of the images on its site, but Chinese internet police who use social media accounts to police the online social platform have begun to reveal themselves to users in an effort to raise the awareness of their actions online by revealing what content they are blocking, while easing concerns about internet gambling and pornography.

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