A photographer who gained notoriety for telling Lorde to "harden up" after he published pictures of her in a bikini has appeared in court.

David Chai Peglar, known as David Grr in the social pages, was charged with male assaults female and appeared in the Auckland District Court on Saturday.

Court documents showed Peglar, 27, had allegedly assaulted a woman earlier that morning.

Peglar incurred the vitriol of Lorde followers last year after he posted a photo on his Facebook page of her hanging out on a beach in a bikini.

The photo received a critical response from his followers and Lorde contacted him privately to express her unhappiness.

He told her to harden up and not take it personally.

"If she takes everything personally she's going to be a wreck by the end of the year. I had to say something to her, I guess as a warning to her, that she needed to harden up a little bit," Peglar was reported as saying.