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Tom Forsythe’s Food Chain Barbie Photographs

Link to a gallery of photos by Tom Forsythe which feature nude and de-limbed Barbies in a variety of food-related tableaus. These images were the subject of a legal battle between Forsythe and the doll’s maker, Mattel, which ultimately left the photographer free and thankfully not “saddled with over $2 million in battle costs,” according to a statement on his website:

“That’s how much legal tender it took before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote a scathing opinion that called Mattel’s case against me potentially ‘unreasonable and frivolous.’ From the time Mattel sued me on August 24, 1999 up until that December 29, 2003 decision, the case always seemed unreasonable, while the difficulty was finding a way to prove that in court without going bankrupt. Not that Mattel, who uses attorneys who send mock hand grenades to potential clients with the tag line ‘we’ll go to war for you’, would actually use that as a legal strategy…”

(thanks, Violet!)