Little Girl on the Beach – Karen Pearson

After decades of being out of print, iconic sixties image Little Girl on the Beach by John Pearson is finally available again as a 21 1/4″ x 18″ black & white poster, distributed exclusively through Amoeba Music. The subject of the photograph is actually one of Amoeba Music’s owners, Karen Pearson, who was four years of age when her father snapped the iconic image on a Bay Area beach in 1965. Not planned or staged/posed in any way, the casually taken photo began its ubiquitous life almost by accident when, upon the suggestion of others in the Bay Area Photographers Association, it was entered as part of a children’s alphabet themed exhibit in the San Francisco Art Festival that year. The photo, chosen to represent “J for Joy” in the festival, would go on to become globally popular, and would also become Pearson’s best known photograph.

Here is some background on Magic Doors by John Pearson.