By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press Writer
March 16, 2001
LONDON (AP) - It's Thursday afternoon at London's
Saatchi Gallery and curator Jenny Blyth is serving tea
and cookies to a group of naked protesters.
Things have not been normal at the gallery since
police last week pronounced three photos in the ``I Am a
Camera'' exhibition child pornography and gave Blyth
until Thursday to remove them.
She refused and the Crown Prosecution Service said
late Thursday it would not press charges against the
gallery.
The prosecutor said there was not ``a realistic
prospect of conviction'' under the Protection of
Children Act, which makes it an offense to take or
possess indecent photographs of children.
The controversy surrounding the case has sparked a
debate about art, obscenity and the role of the tabloid
press.
Detectives from the obscene publications unit said
they visited the show after complaints from the public
and journalists.
They singled out three photographs taken from the
private collection of advertising mogul Charles Saatchi
- two by London-based American artist Tierney Gearon
showing her young children naked or semi-naked, and one
by New York photographer Nan Goldin.
Blyth says Gearon's snapshots of her children at play
``show joie de vivre and natural wonderment.''
Goldin's picture of a naked child is ``one of the
sweeter moments'' in a series of raw, sometimes sexually
explicit images of bohemian New York, Blyth said.
`They're beautiful photographs,'' she said. ``A
perverted mind can see indecency in anything.''
Blyth said the show had been running for seven weeks,
with no complaints, before the police stepped in.
Scotland Yard hadn't raided an art gallery since 1970,
when it confiscated erotic lithographs by John Lennon.
Blyth blames the News of the World, a tabloid
newspaper that last year waged a ``name and shame''
campaign against alleged pedophiles and which branded
Gearon's photos ``child porn they call art.''
Blyth suspects the paper instigated the complaints
and says that after the police visit, News of the World
reporters turned up on Gearon's doorstep.
`I categorically deny that. We did not tip off
Scotland Yard,'' said News of the World spokeswoman
Hayley Barlow. The reporters who visited Gearon were not
from the paper, she added.
Few people at the gallery on Thursday took offense at
the pictures, one of which shows Gearon's children
standing on a golden beach clad only in masks. ``They're
absolutely great, just normal family pictures,'' said
free-lance photographer Awad Elzein, 45.
``The people who criticize these pictures look at
them in a very narrow way _ and possibly sick, too.''
Saatchi, a champion of young British artists,
including Damian Hirst and Tracy Emin, is used to
controversy. His show ``Sensation'' outraged New York
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1999 with Chris Offili's
painting of the Virgin Mary adorned with elephant dung.
Controversy certainly has not been bad for business.
On Thursday, a large crowd lined up to pay the $7
admission fee - including five naked protesters. The
nudists were led by Vincent Bethell, 29, who has made
the right not to wear clothes his life's cause.
`The body is not indecent. The body is not a sex
object,'' said Bethell, who spent five months in prison
last year after a series of nude protests outside London
landmarks. He was acquitted in January of causing a
public nuisance.
Offering Bethell a mug of tea, Blyth thanked him for
his support. But once she was out of earshot, Bethell
was less than effusive about the exhibit.
`I spent five months in a prison cell and didn't
receive this kind of support,'' he said. ``People who
are making a profit get more publicity than people
who're suffering a genuine injustice.''
