Brooke Shields nude photo scandal
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Nan Goldin’s Klara and Edda belly-dancing, a photo of two girls (right), was among 149 others in the ‘Thanksgiving’ collection owned by Elton John.
Is it nasty?
When it went on show at the Baltic Centre For Contemporary Art in Newcastle, England, in 2007, it raised a storm of protest and accusations that Klara and Edda was an example of kiddie porn.
John became embroiled in a tasteless kiddie porn controversy. He’s gay so he must have an unhealthy interest in kids, was the impication.
More recently, other pictures of children, but this time unquestionably pornographic, apparently, feature in the sudden resignation of Raymond Lahey, a Canadian Roman Cathloic bishop.
And even more recently in Britain, actress Brooke Shields is the centre of yet another simmering ‘kiddie porn’ furor, a scandal on several different levels.
“Tate Modern brings together artists from the 1980s onwards who have embraced commerce and the mass media to build their own ‘brands’,” says the promo burb to the Tate Modern Pop Life exhibition, slated to run util October 13.
Included was Richard Prince’s photo of Shields aged 10, all dolled up.
Called Spiritual America, as with Nan Goldin’s Klara and Edda, it’s been taken down.
But Prince’s pic is a copy of another Brooke’s mother, Teri, okayed for a Playboy’s 1976 Sugar ’n' Spice, for which she was paid $450.
Enter Pretty Baby, starring Brooke Shields.
Midway, Shields is, “auctioned off in a New Orleans bordello,” said People magazine at the time, 1978, going on:
“She plays a child prostitute with a disconcertingly angelic air: Her Toulouse-Lautrec pout is sensual, ethereal, mesmerizing. Yet her body — later seen naked — is a child’s, thin and gawky. ”
Good job the pic was removed. Right?
But wait. The exhibition was initially, “open to members of the Tate … before opening to the public,” says The Guardian.
A gallery spokeswoman confirmed the display had been “temporarily closed” and the catalogue, “withdrawn from sale,” says the story, continuing »»»
The work had been accompanied by a warning, and the Tate had sought legal advice before displaying it.
The decision by officers to visit Tate Modern is understood to have been made after police chiefs saw coverage of the exhibition in today’s newspapers, rather than as a result of complaints.
Officers met gallery bosses and are also understood to have consulted the Crown Prosecution Service as to whether the image broke obscenity laws.
A Scotland Yard source said the actions of its officers were “common sense” and were taken to pre-empt any breach of the law. The source said the image of Shields was of potential concern because it was of a 10-year-old, and could be viewed as sexually provocative.
The work has been shown recently in New York, without attracting major controversy, where it gave the title to the 2007 retrospective of Prince’s work at the Guggenheim Museum.
The Pop Life exhibition also includes works from Jeff Koons’s series Made in Heaven, large-scale photographic images that depict the artist and the porn model La Cicciolina having sexual intercourse.
There are also works by Cosey Fanni Tutti, who, as part of her artistic practice, worked as a porn and glamour model in the 1970s and then displayed some of the resulting images in an exhibition at the ICA in 1976.
Meanwhile, perhaps harking back to Lahey’s problems, “Readers tempted to bring up the image in Google should bear this in mind: under UK law, if a picture is indecent, then possession of that image is an offence,” The Register stresses, adding:
“With a few specific exemptions — most notably around research, forensics and law enforcement — there is no opt-out from that harsh fact of legal life: idle curiosity would certainly not count as an excuse in court.”
(Cheers, Ellie)
kiddie porn controversy – Elton John photos in kiddie porn probe, September 26, 2007
unquestionably pornographic – Bishop Lahey and ‘the mystery of faith’, October 2, 2009
People – Pretty Brooke, May 29, 1978
The Guardian – Tate Modern removes naked Brooke Shields picture after police visit, September 30, 2009
The Register – Brooke Shields pic exposes real/online rift, October 1, 2009
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October 2nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Your link for unqestionably pornographic is a blank http:/// (note the three slashes).
And yeah, I managed to download a really high res, uncensored version of that picture yesterday and agree that it’s definitely soft kiddie porn.
However, what harm this particular picture does is another matter. It isn’t harmful.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
^^ Fixed. Thanks.
Cheers!
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:28 pm
As much as I abhor pedophiles and exploitive child pornography, I have to question this almost automatic classification of everything involving child nudity/partial nudity as “pornography”. Certainly, some images exist to make other, non-sexual statements.
And, what of “Pretty Baby”??
Is it suddenly the opinion of the masses that this movie was “nothing more than child pornography”?
Tread carefully, people, before you consign us all the police state you seem to be asking for lately!
October 4th, 2009 at 10:00 am
lately? this has been the trend since 1980, when reagan politicized religion and “family values” crap.
October 4th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
I thought it was a still from Pretty Baby at first…