On Thursday, December 21, a federal appeals court in the United States reopened the case “Child sexual exploitation” presented by the 32-year-old man who in 1991 appeared as a naked child on the cover of the hugely popular album It does not matter of the group Nirvana.
Request Spencer Elden against the rock group claims he suffered “permanent damage” as the group and others profited from his image as a child, swimming underwater in a pool with a dollar bill hanging from a hook.
Spencer Elden, the child on the cover of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album, recreated the photograph several years later, when he was 25. The lawsuit claims the image violates federal laws against child pornography, although no criminal charges were ever filed.
A change of criteria
Last year, a federal judge in California dismissed the lawsuit but allowed Elden to file an amended version, which the judge then rejected again because the 10-year statute of limitations had expired on one of the laws used as the legal basis .
Thursday’s decision by three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court in California he reversed that decision and sent the case back to the lower court.
Kurt Cobain, the famous leader of Nirvana who died in 1994.The appeals court found that any publication of the image “could constitute new personal injuries” with a new deadline, citing the image’s display on a special version of the album released for its 30th anniversary in 2021.
“The question of whether the Nevermind album cover meets the definition of child pornography is not relevant to this appeal,” the court wrote, according to the New York Times.
In an email to the news agency Nirvana attorney Bert Deixler of the Associated Press called the decision “a technical failure.”
“We will defend this case vigorously and anticipate victory“, he wrote.
The famous photo session
“Okay, throw the baby in the water.” At the Passadena Aquatic Center, the voice of the photographer Kirk Weddle was heard clearly, and little Spencer Elden went down in history as a child on the cover of Nevermind, the album that catapulted Nirvana to worldwide success and which would definitively place the grunge style at the center of the music scene.
CLAIMA20141027_0192 Kirk Weddle Nirvana. The Seattle grunge band was born as an example of anti-mainstream culture but was then co-opted by the mass apparatus.Of course, neither Weddle nor Elden, who had just turned four months old, could imagine in those days of 1991 that 30 years after that image It would be present in more than 30 million homes and would become one of the iconic covers in rock history.
Kurt Cobain I wanted a baby who was “born under water.” As the photographer explained: “In those days, before the Internet, you had to go to the bookstore and look through birth books to find photos. That’s what I did… but there was no way to take a photo.” Good cover. I couldn’t find any good photos! They were all too graphic to use.”
“Kurt came up with the idea of adding a hook to make the scene more impactful. “We spent the afternoon sitting around thinking about all the fun things we could do,” he said.
The session lasted no more than five minutes. The photographer got a nice experience in addition to his thousand-dollar fee – which included hiring a diver, in case something went wrong – and the photo went to the laboratory where magic hands added the hook and the bill. They paid $200 to the child’s parents.
Source: Clarin
