Irvine Passes Nude Model Case to N.M.

The Irvine Police Department will not pursue its investigation into pictures of a partially nude 12-year-old girl taken by a Laguna Beach photographer, but has turned the case over to police in Santa Fe, N.M., where the photos were taken.

A spokesman for police in Santa Fe would not confirm that an investigation was under way, but Roger Butow, the fiance of photographer Marilyn Lennon, said he spoke to a Santa Fe police detective Friday. The detective was awaiting copies of the photos, according to Butow, but was investigating New Mexico statutes on child pornography and had already contacted federal authorities regarding the case.

Lennon took the photographs in June at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop, in a weeklong session led by nationally known art photographer Joyce Tenneson. On Tuesday, Lennon took three slides depicting a 12-year-old female model, nude from the waist up, to Irvine Photo Graphics for printing, and the lab decided to alert police.

After three days of investigation, Irvine police decided Friday that because the photos were taken in Santa Fe, the case was not in the department’s jurisdiction, according to Lt. Vic Thies. It was also determined that Lennon could not be charged with possession of pornographic material under California law.

Irvine police will hold on to the original slides at the request of Santa Fe police, Thies said.

Lennon, a makeup artist and photographer who takes studio portraits for model portfolios, wanted the slides printed for her personal portfolio. “My intention was purely from an artistic point of view,” she said Thursday.

On Friday, after the publication of a Times story on the investigation, Lennon received several offers of legal assistance. She is due to meet today with Eve-Marie Boyd, a Laguna Beach attorney who belongs to an association called California Lawyers for the Arts, to explore her legal options.

Tenneson, reached Friday at her studio in New York, confirmed that the girl’s mother was present during the sessions. Tenneson added that she doesn’t usually use underage models in her workshops, but that it was suggested by the mother--who is also a model--and the daughter. Both were paid for the sessions, she said.

Tenneson said the young model was “very comfortable” with the sessions. “I was the one who suggested we wrap her (below the waist), because I didn’t want to run into any problems.”

Betty Farrell, owner of Irvine Photo Graphics, has said the decision to contact police was not a “value judgment,” but an effort to respond to Irvine police requests to contact authorities if “anything involving nudity of minors” was received.

Commercial photo processing laboratories are required under state law to contact authorities if they receive materials showing evidence of child abuse or depicting “sexual conduct” involving children under 14. Several attorneys contacted Friday by The Times said that, as described, the photographs taken by Lennon do not appear to fall under state definitions of “sexual conduct.”

Previously developed prints of the slides, provided to The Times, show the girl with fabric wrapped around her waist, her torso and breasts exposed.

Alarmed arts activists said the situation recalled the widely publicized case of San Francisco art photographer Jock Sturges, whose studio was raided last year after the FBI received a tip from a commercial film processor.