128 Elton John's Goldin photo not indecent, prosecutors say CBC News, October 26, 2007
A photograph of two young girls by American Nan Goldin is not indecent, Britain's Crown Prosecution Service has decided. The photo Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing, part of a collection owned by singer Elton John, was removed by police from an art exhibit in Gateshead in September. John then asked for the exhibit, titled Thanksgiving and featuring 149 photos taken by Goldin and owned by him, to be shut down. The Crown's Northumbria South unit revealed that this is not the first time it has considered indecency charges over the image of two young girls, one of them naked with her legs apart. It said it had investigated the picture in 2001 when it was part of another exhibition at the Saatchi gallery in London and had decided then that it was not indecent. To consider the photograph indecent now, the CPS would have had to determine that standards of decency had changed since 2001. "I am not satisfied that is the case," CPS representative Kerrie Bell said on Friday. "Even if the photograph was now considered to be indecent, a defendant would be able to raise a legitimate defence, given that the photograph was distributed for the purposes of display in a contemporary art gallery after having been deemed not to be indecent by the earlier investigation." Klara And Edda Belly-Dancing had been exhibited in the Saatchi gallery in London in 2001 as part of the I Am A Camera exhibition. John said on his website that the photo has been exhibited in Europe and offered for sale at Sotheby's in New York in 2002 and 2004 without any objections. He bought the Thanksgiving collection in 1999. Goldin is renowned for her sexual imagery of herself and of gay and transvestite people. The Baltic Gallery in Gateshead welcomed the decision that the image was not indecent but issued a statement saying it was disappointed that an important exhibit had been shut over the incident Source : http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2007/10/26/goldin-photo.html
Elton John, shown at an AIDS benefit in October 2006, said he's exhibited the photo Klara and Eddy Belly Dancing in Europe without any objections.