police as curators
Hot off the press: a Nan Goldin photograph from (Sir) Elton John’s private collection, to be exhibited at England’s Baltic Modern Art Gallery, has been confiscated by the police, on suspicion that it may breach child pornography laws. The NYTimes and the Telegraph are all over it. Apparently the Saatchi already went through this nonsense with a Nan Goldin photograph in 2001, and London police backed down after realizing they were unlikely to secure a conviction.
To find the culprit image, “Edda and Klara Belly Dancing, Berlin (1998)” (above), I had to actually head to the physical stacks (gasp), as a perfunctory online search proved unusually fruitless. Quickly found it in the intimidatingly hefty The Devil’s Playground (Phaidon, 2003). Jen Graves of the Seattle Stranger wrote this last year:
…but 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.
Read Mia Fineman’s The Nan Goldin Story here.
Update: I had the picture here, but I’m taking it down, as I was getting a sudden spate of blog traffic to this entry, apparently, which made me uncomfortable. Interesting. Go find the book if you’re interested.