As employees of one of the area's leading professional photo developers, the staff at Zona Photographic Laboratories had seen it all - the violent, the graphic, even what some might call the pornographic.
But it was a mother's nude photographs of her 4-year-old son that troubled the company's president enough to call police, which launched a child abuse investigation.Toni Marie Angeli, a part-time student in a beginning photography class at Harvard University, said she's furious about the investigation and blames the Cambridge lab for going to police behind her back.
She said recently that the photos of her son were innocent portraits. And her lawyer says no film developer has any obligation to report suspicions of child pornography.
"I think it's scary that they are deciding to edit people's work, and that if you're not an artist and you're not famous you're in jeopardy of persecution," Angeli said. "I feel mothers and parents should be able to photograph their children."
The state Department of Social Services and the Middlesex County district attorney agreed, finding the 31-year-old mother's photos were not done with lascivious or harmful intent.
Her trouble isn't over, though. She still faces charges stemming from a confrontation with police who questioned her about the pictures when she went to pick them up Nov. 2 with her son and husband.
Police said she threw a lamp, injuring a photo lab worker. She is charged with assault and battery, malicious destruction of property and disorderly conduct.
Angeli denies throwing the lamp. Her attorney, John G. Swomley, said police threatened to take away her son, grabbed her arm and handcuffed her after she swore at one of the officers. Swomley said the officer tried to stop Angeli's screams by putting his hands on her throat.
In 33 pictures taken for Angeli's class project she called "Innocence in Nudity," her son Nico appears nude and partly clothed.
Prosecutor Martin Murphy said one photo showed the child with an apparently erect penis. Others showed the boy urinating.
"Some of the photographs were the kinds of photographs that would raise some very legitimate concerns," Murphy said.
Swomley said a developing studio has "no obligation to turn people in that they suspect of any form of pornography," but if the people at Zona really were concerned, they could have called Angeli or their own lawyer.
The idea that a company might take your photographs and turn them over to police "is a frightening thing to a parent or an artist," he said.
Zona president Rowena Otremba said that she was troubled by the explicit images and that she notified police out of concern for the child.
"If I was a school nurse and a child came in with a broken arm and bruises, I would want to alert people to see if this child was OK," she said.
John Roberts, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, criticized the lab.
"I don't know a parent who hasn't taken a picture of their kids running around in the buff," Roberts said. "That kind of situation just doesn't run the red flag up the pole."
Meanwhile, five of Angeli's photographs are to go on display later this month at Harvard, Swomley said.
It's not the first time a photo processing lab has called the police.
In New Jersey last year, technicians reported a 45-year-old father of four for taking nude pictures of his 6-year-old daughter for a photography class.
He was charged with making and possessing child pornography and was ordered to stay away from his daughter. That kept him out of his house for two months until a judge lifted the order.
An investigation by state child welfare officials found no abuse.