Photographer: 'Shields image is not porn'

Rex Features

Garry Gross has said that he is is disappointed with the police investigation into his 1975 photograph of a naked 10-year-old Brooke Shields.

A photograph of the image taken by Richard Prince was withdrawn from an exhibition at Tate Modern following a visit by the Metropolitan Police on Wednesday.

Gross told The Daily Telegraph: "The photo has been infamous from the day I took it and I intended it to be.

"It certainly doesn't breach child pornography laws here because a judge said so. In order for it to be considered pornographic here, she would have to be doing something sensual or sexual. But she's not. She's just sitting in the bathtub."

A US judge ruled in 1983 that the photographs were "not sexually suggestive, provocative or pornographic".

However, founder of children's charity Kidscape Michele Elliott said: "Brooke Shields was 10 years old when this picture was taken. She could not have given informed consent to it being used. It must be bordering on child pornography. It is certainly not art.

"If you are using a picture of a naked child to bring people to your exhibition, then you are exploiting that child. It's as if they are using a 10-year-old girl for bait."

She added: "I find it disturbing and they should be ashamed of themselves. And putting the picture in a room with a warning outside really is a magnet for paedophiles."

Prince has described his Spiritual America work as a commentary on Shields as an "abstract entity".