Do Baby Pics Belong to Parents or Kids?

Cover of Larry Rivers: Art and the Artist

Who has control of the pictures from childhood once the subjects of those pictures are grown adults? It’s not a terribly relevant question for most of us — Mom wants them? She can have them!

But it’s relevant for Emma Tamburlini, the 43-year-old daughter of now deceased proto-pop artist Larry Rivers. Among the questionable gems in Rivers’ collection of photos and film are various interviews with his daughters about their breasts. The New York Times has a story in the Arts section today about the daughter’s desire to get rid of them.

Tamburlini said she was pressured from the age of 11 to do the interviews — naked or without a shirt on, of course — and she would like the film destroyed. When she protested, she was told she was a bad girl. This led to problems in her life and having the films “out there in the world” makes it harder for her to recover.

New York University purchased the film from the Larry Rivers Foundation. NYU has assured Tamburlini that the films won’t be available to the public until both she and her sister, Gwynne Rivers, have died.

But is that good enough? Do the sisters get any say over the photos and films?

Here’s what Rivers’ Foundation director David Joel says:

“I can’t be the person who says this stays and this goes,” he said. “My job is to protect the material.”

Fair enough. Only here’s what NYU’s dean of Libraries, Carol Mandel says:

“If the extent of the restriction currently planned should be greater, we can have conversations with all the interested parties about the handling of this material going forward,” she said.

The story goes on to illustrate another conundrum: people place different values on these things. Some might call Rivers’ work child porn — which Tambrulini seems surprised hasn’t happened yet — while others say it’s no big deal.

So who should make the call? NYU or Tambrulini and her sister? What about those embarrassing pics of you in a tub? Or with your first wife that your mother refuses to take out of the family photo albums? They’re her property. But aren’t they yours too?

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