This photo is “#3- John Bult- Julie’s Sixteenth Birthday” on the list of the 10 worst album covers of all time. Here’s the description that goes with this photo:
This photo appears to have been taken closer to Julie’s 27th birthday, but let’s pretend we are idiots for a minute. In the world of visual communication, you have to worry about things like the feeling an image evokes. I *think* they wanted this to be a picture of a father consoling his young daughter on her sweet sixteen because she got pregnant or something. I’m not a father, but I’d guess you do stuff like that when your daughter turns sixteen. What I see when I look at this picture is a married guy (wedding ring) in a bar (beer and cigarette), holding hands with a girl who is twenty years his junior. She has been in the trunk of his Camaro for two or three days, and he made her put on lots of makeup so he could get her in to the bar for a “date”. He is busy insisting that she loves him, or will grow to love him if she knows what’s good for her. She silently screams for him to stop squeezing her hand so hard and just let her go. The absence of eye contact says it all. She is praying for the sweet release of death.