NYU wants to display the archives of artist Larry Rivers, documenting the city’s artistic and literary scenes of the ’40s through the ’80s. There’s also footage of his two nude adolescent daughters as he interviews them about their bodies, starting at as young as 11.
Filming took place every six months for five years and then was edited into a 45 film, “Growing.” Emma Tamburlini, the younger daughter, now 43, wants the tapes returned to her and her sister (who’s given no comment.) She wants the film destroyed, but NYU plans to keep the footage and “to protect the material” until the daughters are dead.
Tamburlini says she was forced to participate and is naturally reluctant to have New Yorkers gandering at close-ups of her underage genitals. Legally, since she never consented to the videotaping, she may have the right to have the tapes destroyed.
“I kind of think that a lot of people would be very uptight, or at least a little bit concerned, wondering whether they have in their archives child pornography,” Tamburlini says.
Is this documented abuse? Is it rare and enlightening art? Artists are allowed to tote the line, more or less — Sally Mann, Irina Ionesco, Jock Sturges, Bill Henson — but in terms of the intent of Larry Rivers’s “footage,” it just sounds creepy and not particularly artistic.
Although my father was not a famous artist, he documented himself watching me in inappropriate ways, just like Larry. Was this a trend in 1970’s Manhattan?
As a victim of my own father’s predatory desires, I hope this doesn’t get swept under the proverbial rug. I started reading all the comments posted regarding Larry’s archive and his abuse. As a father, he abused his daughters by using his authority over them to get them to participate in his project. His thoughts were of himself, not his daughters. Loving parents don’t take risks with their children’s welfare just to complete their own pet projects. Larry’s wife quoted him, “What Larry said was that it would belong to them, as a record that when they got older they could look back at.” My father taped himself saying “This is not for us to know, but for you to know 10 or 20 years from now.” and I used this in my film as evidence. Chilling. One person pointed out another atrocity that became public: the images from Abu Ghraib. I kept reading and couldn’t believe the similarities to my own experience. I even wrote an obituary for my father that references Abu Ghraib.
I once had a father named Abe
Who treated me like a hot babe
He lecherously stared
While he photographed me bare
So my home felt like Abu Ghraib.
Larry’s daughter Emma said “I don’t want it out there in the world. It just makes it worse.” She has every right to this archive and to do whatever she wants with it. It is a document of her lost childhood. her archive of betrayal. Every time I revisit my father’s archive the pain is excruciating. I have been in therapy for many many years and nothing can compare to the healing I have achieved since I unleashed my father’s archive in public. The difference, as noted in my Cahiers du Cinema interview, is that I chose to re-use the toxic material to give birth to the artist within me. I made my own choice in showing my pain publicly. It was not dictated by an “art authority.”
You can watch my 18 minutes of trauma cinema at themarinaexperiment.com
having the title "artist" does not give you free reign to abuse children in any way. Its scary to think that artists are "allowed to tote the line" in this arena- its total BS that filming children in this manor might be considered art solely because an artist made them. To put it in perspective, if the neighbor submitted this footage to NYU, that neighbor would be immediately arrested.