Exhibit Pulled After Newspaper Article; Showed Photos of Burn Victim

By: When photographer Bonnie Fournier was capturing families enjoying happy moments for a photo project this summer, she was particularly struck by a young couple and their four children.

Fournier took nearly 150 playful shots of them June 4 as part of "The Smooch Project: 100 Acts of Affection, Minnesota." She used six photos of the family in a large print of 100 photos that was to in the Fine Arts exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair.

Fournier said she particularly enjoyed photographing 10-year-old Jordan "doing her best to make the funniest face ever before seen on the planet" as the young mother, Julie, tried to kiss her.

The State Fair pulled Fournier's display Monday after fair officials -- and the artist -- learned that Jordan was the girl found burned to death by scalding water at her father's home in Blaine six weeks after the pictures were taken.

Jordan's father, Jason Gonsioroski, 26, and his live-in girlfriend, Julie Meier, 24, are charged with second-degree murder in her death. Gonsioroski is being held in the Anoka County Jail. Meier, who isn't Jordan's mother, is jailed in Isanti County.

"At this stage, the piece is inappropriate for the Minnesota State Fair," said Jerry Hammer, fair executive vice president. "We sympathize with the artist because she was unaware the incident would happen when the piece was created."

Fournier hadn't decided Monday what should happen with the piece.

"Her face is beautiful," Fournier said, looking at the pictures of Jordan.

Fournier was working out of a makeshift booth during the International Children's Festival outside the Park Square Theatre in downtown St. Paul when the family with two children in strollers and two children walking passed by in the late afternoon.

Fournier said she spent 20 minutes shooting the family in dozens of sweet and, sometimes, silly poses.

"We laughed a lot," Fournier said. "We had a good time."

Although she had their full names, Fournier never connected the family and later news reports of Jordan's death. But after a photo of 2-year-old Cadence and her father was published Saturday in a Star Tribune story about Fournier's project, a family acquaintance recognized them and contacted the newspaper.

"I just can't believe that can be true," Fournier said, before going online and discovering that it was.

Fournier plans to continue the Smooch Project next summer, traveling throughout the Midwest photographing kissing duos in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin. Eventually, she'd like to travel across the world, collecting 10,000 smooching pairs.

But Monday, she was shaken and wasn't thinking about those plans.

"I look at these people and I think, 'What is your life like?' I'm catching just one second of your life. I was expecting something like this to happen in 10,000 photographs, but in 100?"

She said she thinks it will take a long time to balance the horror of Jordan's death with her memory of meeting and photographing the family -- if she can ever do so.

"Jordan was happy. She was laughing. She was sticking her tongue out to the camera, Fournier said. "They seemed, you know, really great."