Elton John's award winng photo siezed as "pornography"

[Jeffersons Ghost]

Rocker says he's owner of seized photo
1 hour, 24 minutes ago



LONDON - Elton John said Wednesday that he owns a photo of two naked girls taken by award-winning photographer Nan Goldin that was seized by police at a British gallery over concerns it amounted to child pornography.

John confirmed ownership of "Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing" in a statement on his Web site. He said it is among 149 images comprising Goldin's "Thanksgiving" installation.

Northumbria police said the photo was taken from the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, northeastern England. They confirmed Tuesday that an image had been taken from an exhibit "to assess whether or not an offense had been committed."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070926/ap_en_mu/people_elton_john

[Whoa_Nelly]

1. IF it is proven that the photo is child porn

then, will Nan Goldin be arrested? Will Elton be arrested?

This is a strange story.


on edit:
Will this kind of photography seizing for suspected child porn lead to photos by other artists, such as Anne Geddes, to become questionable enough to be seized as well?

Again, this is one strange story.

[OnyxCollie]

6. Anne Geddes photos should be seized for being crap.

Creepy baby/plant hybrids.

Seize Thomas Kinkade's garbage, too.

[Goblinmonger]

9. Amen, brother. n/t

[Whoa_Nelly]

11. On her website, there are photos of naked children huddling and covered in mud

(that photo found in this gallery)
http://www.annegeddes.com/home/galleries/privateCollection/privateCollection2.aspx


and another of a naked little girl kissing a naked little boy
(but, only the top half of their bodies are visible in both of these photos}

(photo found here)
http://www.annegeddes.com/home/galleries/privateCollection/privateCollection3.aspx

Am shocked, I tell you! SHOCKED!

[renie408]

14. If it is sold in the mall, it isn't art. So Kinkade is safe.

But I saw the picture of the two girls in question and while I am not ready to AGREE with the police here, it is not comparable to Ann Geddes stuff. It could be considered a fairly 'shocking' picture. In another place and another context, it might be reasonably construed as pornography.

I think this is probably a case of pornography being in the eye of the beholder. Wouldn't WHERE the picture was and the intent of the display be taken into consideration?

[madeline_con]

37. "Painter of Light" my ass!

:rofl:

Geddes' stuff s definitely LAME-O.

[shain from kane]

2. He was just researching child porn, like Pete Townshend. n/t

[seemunkee]

3. Link to a thunbnail of the photo

Judge for yourself
http://www.artfact.com/catalog/viewLot.cfm?iid=754029&ri=141

[leeroysphitz]

4. Ooph. I'm not an art critic but that looks pretty creepy. nt

[SacredCow]

12. I'm with you....

The image is kind of small, but from what I can see.... Well.... It's nothing I'd really want to see more of.

I'll withhold judgement.

[goodgd_yall]

22. Ditto

It actually doesn't even look very artistic. It looks like a photo someone could have taken at home--more like a snapshot.

[mitchum]

35. That has always been Goldin's aesthetic...

all the way back to "The Ballad Of Sexual Dependency"

[Annces]

27. I think it should not be displayed

That is the type of photo only a parent should have IMO.

Side note - I once did a drawing of a young niece and did not draw her shirt, just left a neck line and necklace. Later I asked my sister if she wanted me to draw in a shirt, because of all the brouhaha about this, but she didn't.

[madeline_con]

38. Damn!

I can see the concern.

[Katherine Brengle]

44. Jesus H. Christ.

I don't want to assume that his purpose was nefarious, but that creeped me out as well.

[Buns_of_Fire]

45. It's the sort of thing you look at at say, "Whaaaaa?"

Not my taste. Cezanne, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Rembrandt, Gauguin, Pissaro, Seurat, and many others have nothing to be afraid of.

[SoxFan]

5. Elton John's albums seized as "crap"

:hide:

[renie408]

13. Ok, that was funny. n/t

[ProfessorGAC]

19. LOL

Yeah, the EPA should seize them under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
The Professor

[madeline_con]

39. You don't have to be in his fan club.

It's o.k. :loveya:

But what about the pic?

[Xithras]

7. I don't know what British law is...

...but in the U.S. that would not be considered child porn. Images of nude children, even nude children with their genitalia showing, aren't neccesarily illegal here. Photos like these are only illegal if the children are posed in a manner intended to be erotic or sexual.

It's really hard to tell from that small photo, but it looks like it's just a picture of two naked kids playing. I would question the intelligence of any parent who would allow a photo like that to be published in a gallery, but they don't look to be any more objectionable than the classic "toddler in the tub" photos.

Of course, my opinions might be a result of my upbringing. When I was a kid, clothing was damned near optional until I was practically a teenager :)

[ET Awful]

8. Many parents and grandparents have been arrested for those "toddler in tub"

photos.

http://www.popphoto.com/popularphotographyfeatures/4130/how-a-photo-can-ruin-your-life.html

[halobeam]

15. I could live to be a thousand, and still be surprised daily.

Good thing I will not live to be a thousand.

[Xithras]

16. Arrested? Yes, but charges are rare and convictions almost unheard of.

Most DA's know that making a parent into a pervert over a bathroom shot is a tough sell to a jury. When you do read about convictions, they are nearly always posed shots or were taken by people with prior sexual convictions.

I take LOTS of pictures, thousands of shots a year, and I probably have a few dozen which contain nude shots of my kids. All innocent. Heck, I just shot one last weekend. My three year old son jumped into the kiddy pool stark naked and then climbed into his sandbox to play. I came out to a three foot tall naked "Abominable Sandman", and had to take a picture. Too cute for words. Sexual? Not in a million years.

About a decade ago I got into an argument with a photo processor about whether one of my daughters shots was "porn" (the developer had a strict no porn policy). The shot? I was climbing out of the pool with my then 5 year old daughter in my arm, and she didn't have a top on. She had bottoms, but had pulled the bikini off several hours before. As I climbed out of the pool, my wife snapped a picture of us. The developer swore that a five year old girl without a top was obscene, and a picture of her was therefore pornographic.

I'm fully aware that there might be some cop or investigator out there who thinks he'll be a hero by arresting me for some of my photos. A tragic number of people automatically assume that ANY art with nudity is automatically pornographic. I put my faith in the fact that no sane jury would ever convict someone for taking innocent photos of their kids.

[ET Awful]

20. From the article:

"Jeffrey B. (he requested his last name not be printed to protect his daughters) was divorced and had custody of his two girls, then aged 4 and 7, until a Genovese drugstore photo lab in the New York City borough of Queens inserted a note into a packet of his prints that said several shots had been turned over to police. Seven years later -- after four weekends in jail, three years on probation, mandated therapy, losing custody of his daughters, contemplating suicide, and incurring about $300,000 in lawyer's fees and loss of income -- he's a registered sex offender and has no contact with his children."

Now whether the jury was sane or not is arguable, but the guy is a registered sex offender now.

[Xithras]

29. From that same article, about that same guy....

"In the other offending photo, the girls are shot from below, sans bathing suit bottoms, as they pretend to read books. A crucial fact in Jeffrey's conviction: One girl testified that Daddy posed them."

He took his daughters' clothes off, posed them, and then took photos of them from below. We're not talking about a "bathtub shot" here, but about a guy who used his children as nude photo models and apparently took the photos from angles intended to expose their genitalia. Big difference.

Photographing a child in the nude is not inherently illegal. What makes the photograph illegal is the intent of the shot, and whether any reasonable person would have defined it as sexually titillating. A still life shot of a child, in which the child's nudity is not the message of the image, is not inherently illegal. When I snapped the image of my son, the message of the image was the particular moment, and would have been served just as well if he'd been wearing underwear. His nudity was incidental to the photograph.

This guy took photos of his daughters reading. The nudity was not necessary. The fact that he removed their clothes and posed them suggests that the NUDITY of the girls was an important part of the message conveyed in the images. At that point, it's no longer about recording an event, but about promoting the concept of a nude child for whatever reason. While there ARE a few valid reasons why an ARTIST might want to do something like that (Geddes, despite the crapness of her work, is an example), it's an incredibly fine line, and anyone treading it had better be able to show a solid portfolio of posed portraiture to establish his work as seriously artistic. Joe Schmoe taking a few posed nudes of his naked kids with his cheap $75 digital camera isn't going to cut it.

[ET Awful]

31. Nowhere does it say he took their clothes off. Nor does it say that anyone

said that in court. You are reading into it something that is not there.

Recall that we're talking about children who have little comprehension of what would be meant by "pose". If dad told them to sit still and read, a child would likely interpret that as "posing".

You are simply projecting a bias into the case that is not depicted in the article and is not based in fact, merely in your opinion and desire to believe that innocent people aren't convicted for baseless charges.

[Xithras]

36. They were "pretending" to read. Not reading.

We're not talking about two naked little girls who were reading Dr. Seuss in their bedroom when daddy walked in and said "hey, sit up for a second so I can take your picture". He posed them naked. He faked the shot. They weren't really doing what was depicted in the picture. Unless you're accusing the girls of lying, I don't really know what else you can read into that.

You may be correct that he didn't strip their clothes off himself, but he chose to take posed shots of the girls without clothing on. If he wanted to pose them, he could have just as easily asked them to put their bottoms on. By failing to so so, he created the entire situation. He decided to take staged, nude shots of his daughters from below, an angle which would have shown genitalia. His choice. He's either a pedophile or a moron. Either way, through ignorance or by design, his photos would have crossed the line into child porn.

Any reasonable person must therefore ask themselves this simple question: What were his intentions when he decided to stage a photographic shot of his daughters faking a mundane activity, and determined that they needed to be naked while doing so?

There are only two legally valid reasons to take photos of your children naked:

1. You are a relative recording a real life event for posterity, in which the child happens to be naked. This covers bathroom shots, and in the U.S. would also cover the art piece in the original article.

2. You are actually an ARTIST, working on a nude piece that includes a child. This is legal only if the pose is not deliberately lewd or sexually provocative. Genitalia shots are out of the question. The legal footing here is VERY small and tightly defined, but some does exist. Anyone trying to use this as a defense had better be able to prove their artistic credentials.

I don't know of any cases where an innocent parent took an innocent unstaged shot of their kid naked and was actually convicted of anything. If you think I'm wrong, name five cases where this has happened. In a nation of 300 million people and thousands of reported sexual abuse cases a year, five measly convictions should be nothing.

Most of this is urban legend and fear-mongering by law enforcement.

[ET Awful]

40. You're projecting what you WANT to have happened instead of what happened.

It's as simple as that.

Anyone who regularly reads photography journals, magazines or websites will run across countless articles regarding just these situations.

Nice of you to defend the overzealous folks who see porn and pedophelia in every picture of a child not covered from head to ankle though.


http://users.rcn.com/kyp/hsangeli.html

http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/01/31/kincaid/

[Zookeeper]

17. Here's an interesting tidbit from that story...

"And the snooping doesn't have to involve anything obviously illegal: In October 2005, a student in North Carolina got a visit from the Secret Service at his high school after the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart photo lab called the police. As a classroom civics assignment to photographically illustrate the Bill of Rights, he'd cut out a magazine photo of President George W. Bush, tacked it to a wall with a red thumbtack through the head, made a thumb's down sign next to it, and snapped a picture. Lesson learned."

So, does this mean our photos are being checked for political content, as well?

[muriel_volestrangler]

41. Most in depth analysis I've found so far

was on the BBC Radio arts programme 'Front Row' - audio available here for the next week: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/frontrow_wed

The story starts about 1 minute 20 seconds into the audio (don't get confused by the final few seconds of the preceding soap opera right at the start of the audio :D ), and lasts about 6 minutes. Roughly, the media lawyer says the Protection of Children Act 1978 prohibits the showing of 'indecent' photos. He says the intention of the photographer doesn't matter, and nor does if the children were happy to be photographed like that at the time. The question of 'indecency' will be left to the Director of Public Prosecutions (senior, but non-political, official), he reckons, and he predicts the decision will be to do nothing, and allow the photo to be displayed - the context the photo is shown in is taken into account, and he thinks this will be taken as 'artistic'. He does suggest the gallery might consider putting up a warning that people would see before they saw the photo.

[cboy4]

10. That Elton John...what a pervert!! It has to be a legitimate

charge because we all know how attracted he is to female genitalia. :eyes:

[CT_Progressive]

18. Naked != Porn. Porn requires a sex act or suggestion of one.

Two naked kids dancing (or standing still, or playing football, etc.) is not porn.

They would have to be kissing, fondling, actually performing a sex act, holding a sex toy, etc. Something indicative.

I have pictures of my daughters very first bath after she was born.
I cannot be arrested for child porn.

[goodgd_yall]

21. Mapplethorpe all over again?

But, I would say the photo definitely would be of interest to child pornographers, though I'm not suggesting Elton is one.

[TroglodyteScholar]

23. Attacking art, just like the Nazis...

...they need control over artistic expression, and that's the trickiest one. So you start with pedophilia accusations because nearly everyone is outraged by that. Once you have that in the bag, it's all Nazi gravy.

Dude wtf.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

24. When I was a baby

it was all the rage to photograph your 9 to 10 month old laying naked on a sheepskin rug... Every person my age, or almost all of us, have that in a photo book...I guess if someone wanted to, they could claim it is pornography...

I would have to see the naked girls picture of Elton's to decide if I thought it is pornography.

[davsand]

25. A description of the photo:

Excerpted from a piece about a Takamori exhibition:

"...you stop dead in your tracks when you hit Edda and Klara Belly Dancing, Berlin (1998), a Nan Goldin photograph that came into the museum's possession just last year. Both of the young girls are laughing and playing; one of them is wrapped in a scrap of sheer costume fabric and the other is lying on her back, her knees bent under her, her legs spread wide for the viewer. Though this is a perfectly natural moment, the dark open hole of the girl's vagina is harrowing. My first thought is that she is about to be raped, or maybe is being raped already, by me, by my looking. I come to my senses. She's at home, playing with a friend and laughing. She's fine. I'm the one who's afraid."

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=53993&mode=print


I can see how the image (as described) would make some people flinch. I keep coming back to the idea, however, that if it moves me enough to offend me, it probably should be protected. That particular standard is totally American in its sensibilities, and I recognize that...

FWIW, I thought Maplethorpe had an amazing eye even IF some of his images were disturbing. Reading a description of anything just is not the same as actually seeing it and forming your own opinion.

Regards!


Laura

[goodgd_yall]

28. Hmmm

I'm not sure what the photographer's thoughts on the photo is, but the comment by the viewer certainly shows that it makes one think. Rather than condemn the picture, the reviewer is able to observe and reflect on his/her reaction. I think that is what art can do. I tend to agree with you that if a work of art offends me, it should be protected.

[brentspeak]

26. Pornography -- or CHILD pornography?

There is a slight difference, to put it mildly. The latter is monstrous, despicable, you name it.

[renie408]

30. Wouldn't the context of where and how the photo was displayed

be considered? It is a graphic and possibly disturbing photo and I can see how someone could consider it child pornography. But within the context of an art gallery showing, I would think that would help to ameliorate the 'pornography' feeling.

[bemildred]

32. You know, unless there is violence or coercion or sexual activity I don't

see why I should get upset about pictures of naked children.

[rug]

33. I don't know about the photos but he's starting to look like Denny Crane.

[mitchum]

34. I like Goldin's work and am surprised that Elton John has good taste in some area

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

42. Better hide my Led zepplin album

:scared:

[mainegreen]

43. England's really going off the deep end lately, isn't it?

They need this guy: