The Rocket Man can relax now.
One month after police seized a photograph owned by Elton John from a British art gallery as possible child pornography, prosecutors have officially declared the image not indecent and said no charges will be filed.
The Crown Prosecution Service in Northumbria, northern England, noted the photograph by acclaimed artist Nan Goldin had been exhibited previously without incident.
"Even if the photograph was now considered to be indecent, a defendant would be able to raise a legitimate defense, given that the photograph was distributed for the purposes of display in a contemporary art gallery after having been deemed not to be indecent by the earlier investigation," Kerrie Bell, head of the CPS Northumbria South Unit, told London's Daily Telegraph.
Bell added that she did not believe the "standards of propriety" had changed so drastically since prosecutors first evaluated and okayed the picture for display in 2001 that the artwork warranted a closer inspection to see if it ran afoul of Britain's 1978 Protection of Children Act.
The CPS felt compelled to revisit the issue after fielding complaints from the curator of the show. Dubbed Thanksgiving, the exhibit featured 149 images Goldin shot between 1973 and 1999. Thanksgiving was set to run at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art until Jan. 20.
The controversial photo, Kiara and Edda Belly-Dancing, depicts two young girls, one of whom sits naked with her legs spread out in front of her. John purchased the piece as part of a larger collection from Sotheby's New York in 2002 and 2004. Since then, he has loaned it for display in London, Madrid, Portugal, Warsaw, Zurich and Houston, as John noted, "without any objections."
"This photograph exists as part of the installation as a whole and has been widely published and exhibited throughout the world," the 60-year-old music legend, an avid art collector, said last month, shortly after the probe became public.
One week later, John decided that if one piece was missing and the retrospective couldn't be presented as intended, then there wouldn't a Thanksgiving. At the rocker's request, the gallery closed the exhibition. Curator Jane Jackson said the move came "out of respect for the artistic integrity of the work and the artist."