Brooke Shields at 10

A month ago I noted that the Thought Police had confiscated a photo of Brooke Shields in the nuddy when she was 10 years old, from an exhibition at Tate Passé (CLICK). Yesterday I chanced upon the original photo by Gary Gross, taken in 1975, not Richard Prince’s confiscated version from 1983. The original, shown here, was commissioned by Brooke's ambitious Mom, presumably as an addition to her daughter's modelling portfolio. So Brooke is posed as a model and wears far too much makeup, but she holds a sponge and stands in a bath. In context, this is a failed attempt at a cute kiddie-in-the-bath photo. Nothing pornographic about it. What Prince did was copy the original, crop it to remove the sponge and bath fittings and give it a sinister red cast. By taking it out of context, he turned a misguided kiddie-in-the-bath photo into an even worse photo and suddenly, according to Florence Waters of the Telegraph, it became art and she wonders where to put it (title link). I could tell you, Florence.