Research Project initial ideas
Surveillance
Exposed exhibition Tate BOOK http://channel.tate.org.uk/channel/playlists/97898212001#context:/channel/search?searchQuery=exposed
Phillip-Lorca Dicorcia ‘Heads’
Death taboooooos
Weegee
Che Guerava ‘PROPERGANDA’ – ‘PROFF’
Mussolini
Victorian photos of the dead
Mexico festival of the dead
Bill viola ‘Ocean without shore’
Don McCullen
Paparazzi
Photos of David Kirby
Nobuyoshi Araki photos of dead wife
Sexualisation of children
Wikipedia
Sexualization is the act or process of sexualizing. It refers to the making of a person, group or thing to be seen as sexual in nature[1] or a person to become aware of sexuality. It can also refer to the making of an interpersonal relationship into a sexual relationship.
Popular books on sexualization
A number of books on sexualization have appeared in recent years: the best known of these is Ariel Levy's (2005) Female Chauvinist Pigs, but others include Pamela Paul's Pornified (2005), Carol Platt Liebau’s (2007) ‘’Prude’’, Meenakshi Gigi Durham's (2008) The Lolita Effect, and Sarracino & Scott’s The Porning of America (2008). These generally focus on sexualization as a social problem and particularly on what they regard as the inappropriate sexualization of women and girls.Brookshields by GarryGross
http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/brooke-shields-by-gary-gross/
See –‘ Controversies, a legal and ethical history of photography’
pictures of innocence (1998) Anne Higonet
Sexualisation of children
Sexualization is the act or process of sexualizing. It refers to the making of a person, group or thing to be seen as sexual in nature[1] or a person to become aware of sexuality. It can also refer to the making of an interpersonal relationship into a sexual relationship.
Brookshields by Garry Grosshttp://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/brooke-shields-by-gary-gross/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/6251130/Brooke-Shields-photograph-the-sexualisation-of-children-for-art.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/30/brooke-shields-naked-tate-modern
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-or-abuse-a-lament-for-lost-innocence-2078397.html
See –‘ Controversies, a legal and ethical history of photography’
Pictures of innocence the history and crisis of ideal childhood Anne Higonnet (1998) Anne Higonet
BBC articles
Bill Henson
Sally Mann – photos of her own children
Wikipedia
Mann is perhaps best known[5] for Immediate Family, her third collection, published in 1992. The NY Times said, “Probably no photographer in history has enjoyed such a burst of success in the art world.”[2] The book consists of 65 black-and-white photographs of her three children, all under the age of 10. Many of the pictures were taken at the family's remote summer cabin along the river, where the children played and swam in the nude. Many explore typical childhood themes (skinny dipping, reading the funnies, dressing up, vamping, napping, playing board games) but others touch on darker themes such as insecurity, loneliness, injury, sexuality and death. The controversy on its release was intense, including accusations of child pornography (both in America[6] and abroad[7]) and of contrived fiction with constructed tableaux.[2] One image of her 4-year-old daughter (Virginia at 4) was censored by the Wall Street Journal with black bars over her eyes, nipples and pubic area.[8] Mann herself considered these photographs to be “natural through the eyes of a mother, since she has seen her children in every state: happy, sad, playful, sick, bloodied, angry and even naked.”[9] Critics agreed, saying her “vision in large measure [is] accurate, and a welcome corrective to familiar notions of youth as a time of unalloyed sweetness and innocence,”[10] and that the book “created a place that looked like Eden, then cast upon it the subdued and shifting light of nostalgia, sexuality and death."[11] When Time magazine named her “America’s Best Photographer” in 2001, it wrote:
Books / Articles
Popular books on sexualization
A number of books on sexualization have appeared in recent years: the best known of these is Ariel Levy's (2005) Female Chauvinist Pigs, but others include Pamela Paul's Pornified (2005), Carol Platt Liebau’s (2007) ‘’Prude’’, Meenakshi Gigi Durham's (2008) The Lolita Effect, and Sarracino & Scott’s The Porning of America (2008). These generally focus on sexualization as a social problem and particularly on what they regard as the inappropriate sexualization of women and girls.· Pictures of innocence the history and crisis of ideal childhood Anne Higonnet (1998) Anne Higonet
· Immediate family by Sally Mann
· Vile bodies: Prog 1 - Naked; Prog 2 - Kids
Mann, Sally. DVD
Mann, Sally. DVD
Books to get out
· Female chauvinist pigs : women and the rise of raunch culture
Levy, Ariel. Bower Ashton
Levy, Ariel. Bower Ashton
X Factor
Band on Rhiannon new video
‘Has our increasingly paranoid society declared war on the humble 'weekend snapper'?
Parents banned taking photos of their kids
Reuters
Jock Sturges
David Hamilton
Nursery photos Plymouth
Sally Mann
Larry Clark, Tulsa
Sexualisation of children in photography essay plan
Question: Do we live in a culture that is frightened of photographs of children?
Introduction
Things to include:
A clear topic
Define your terms – clarify sexulisation
Being a mother and a photographer means I take photographs of children, both of my own and of his friends. It is increasingly difficult to feel comfortable taking images of children being children. There is a paranoia surround these images. Why, and is it right to censor photographers of children’s innocence, where do we draw the line?
How we read an image
Things to include:
Placed at the intersection of private and public worlds, a photograph elicits an eminently subjective response. Photographers are therefore the source of endless debates and conflicts that often end up in court..... It is all a guestion of how the pictures are interpreted, of the meaning that is read into them. ‘The right to photograph’ Daniel Girardin. Press release controversies, a legal and ethical history of photography
History
Things to include:
Children have always been portrayed in the art world. During the Italian Renaissance nude boys were featured frequently, mostly in a religious connotation
Controversies
Things to include:
My findings
Examples
· Bill Henson
· Gary Goss 1975
· Jock Sturges 1989
· Sally Mann
The media: news, politics, Tv
Things to include:
Coverage of the issues
David Cameron
Nursery photos
X factor
Technology
Things to include:
Facebook
Mobile phones
Digital cameras
Summary / what this means
Things to include:
ESSAY first draft
Have we become a society that is scared at looking at photographs of children? That is the question I will try to answer or at least understand a little better. Why have we become so paranoid about the depiction of children in the photographic world, and is it right to be concerned about children increasingly be shown in a sexual way in photography and the media.
Being a mother and a photographer means I take photographs of children, both of my own child and of other peoples. There has been increased coverage in the media about the sexualisation of our children. This increase has been mirrored in the art world. There have also been articles about some, interesting, seemingly extreme reactions to parents capturing moments in their own children’s lives. Whether it is recording their child’s first nativity play or football game.
As a society we should not be scared to take photographs of our own children as they grow and change. We should feel comfortable doing this and not feel paranoid and wrong when doing so. We are entitled to our freedom of expression whether we are an artist, photographer or a parent making a family album. People working in the creative world do have a responsibility when depicting children in the work, but what is appropriate, and who’s opinion should it be, where should the line be drawn?
Images of children have caused controversies through out our history and not more so than in the 20th Century, with such photographers as Mapplethorpe, Garry Goss’s photographs of Brooke Shields, Sally Mann’s ‘Immediate Family” and more recently Australian photographer Bill Henson.
In the early 90’s late 80’s photographs of naked children were included in the definition of pornography, Anne Higonnet goes into this in greater depth in her book ‘Pictures of Innocence’ this is another subject to tackle in another essay. However it may be these changes in law that have increased our awareness of these so called sexual images of children, or is it because of these images that there was felt a need to change the definition of pornography ‘nudity is not an action. Nudity might imply or suggest an action involving the person pictured and the person taking the photo, but it is not in and of itself an action, let alone a criminal action.’ A Higonnet (1998)Page 161-162
Children and adolescence have always been portrayed in the art world. During the Italian Renaissance nude boys were featured frequently, such as Michael Angelo’s and Donatello’s David. These sculptures depict a naked David including his rather small and unrealistic genitalia. Michael Angelo’s David is an athletic adolescent, with huge hands, where as Donatello’s David is really rather homo erotic, with a pert bum and camp posture. Photo The depiction of these adolescents is a romanticised ideal created by the artist, it is an interpretation. Religious painting in the Renaissance would also include naked children like Raphael’s Putties from ‘Sistine Madonna’ 1513-14 and Caravaggio’s ‘Cupid’ 1598 – 99. Again these are a romanticised image of childhood. Photos
The Victorians had more money and leisure time than generations before and art moved onto the impressionism. HOW DO I KNOW THIS? Artists were painting from their hearts and children were shown in a …… Photography became more accessible in this era with Photographers such as Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) and Julia Margret Cameron producing countless Romanised images of children, but from quite different approaches. As discussed in A Higonnet “Pictures of Innocence (1998) page 110.
Lewis Carroll photographed young girls that look convincingly innocent in a Romantic way. ‘Carroll insisted his camera, being a mechanically automatic, could do nothing but capture the truth of childhood, which, he also insisted, was inherently innocent’. A Higonnet “Pictures of Innocence (1998) page 10.
Photography was at the beginning of its life so these images only had painting to draw on for inspiration, but now these photographs, are seen in a dubious way like Carroll’s photographs where as painting would not. The photograph of Evelyn Hatch ‘would not have been ambiguous to Victorian audiences. Then as now, her reclining odalisque pose clearly signaled adult and available feminine sexuality’ A Higonnet 1998 page 123. Photo These photographs were discovered in the 20th century bought to question Lewis Carroll’s motives behind these images and made us re - address even the clothed images of young girls. As discussed in Pictures of Innocence 1998 by A Higonnet
As in Carroll’s photographs, the meaning of images change over time and what may have seemed innocent in the Victorian times is seen in a sexual way now. We know that allsorts of inappropriate things were happening to children through this part of history, but I clearly can’t comment on that subject in this essay.
There are so many photographers who have been caught up in controversies when photographing children, whether it is Mapplethorpe’s ‘Jessie McBride’ and ‘Rosie’, Photos that were displayed along side his well know sado-masochistic images or Gary Goss’s photographs of Brooke Shields. Photo
Other photographers such as Jock Sturges and David Hamilton have also been accused of some kind of pornography or been the center of a controversy. Their photographs are of adolescent children, who are on the cusp of adulthood.
David Hamilton’s work is mostly of adolescent girls and his book “The age of innocence’ was withdrawn from WHSmith after Hamilton’s photographs were deemed indecent and of a sexual nature and could not be described as artistic. This was said following the case of Stanley Loam, who was charged with being in possession of 19,000 indecent images of children, Hamilton’s work included. This ruling means that you could be arrested for having a David Hamilton book. From The Guardian website (2005) Photos
Jock Sturge’s work I would consider less sexual than Hamilton’s images that are more artistic, but of course that is my interpretation. The photographs are of both girls and boys and shot mostly on black and white film and outside, in the woods, on the beach and in the water. In comparison to Hamilton’s images they don’t seem sexual, yes they are naked, but that doesn’t mean they are sexual. There was an investigation into Sturge’s work, which is said to have cost the American tax payers over a million dollars. A photo processor reported the images Anne Higonnet (1998) page 191. Photo processors work in a void that can only be filled by their own tastes and, now, with the assumption that all photographs of children’s bodies are guilty until they are proven innocent Anne Higonnet (1998) page 191
Photographers have included their own children in their portfolios of work for many years, Edward Weston series ‘Neil’ and the images from Sally Mann’s book ‘Immediate family’ are among some of the best known.
Edward Weston’s ‘Neil’ series 1925 came out of the modernist approach to abstraction. Photos They were at the time looked at in the context of his other abstract black and white photographs of plants and vegetables. As with Lewis Carroll’s images, in 1990 instead of these images being ‘ some of the most highly acclaimed photographs of a child ever taken’ Anne Higonnet (1998) page 114. Art critic Douglas Crimp ‘decided that the content of the Neils did matter. “The men in my bedroom were perfectly able to read – in Weston’s posing, framing and lighting the young Neil so as to render his body as a classical sculpture – the long-established codes of homo-eroticism.” Page 137 ref Douglas Crimp “The boys in my bedroom”…..
Would Weston have had this intention when taking these photographs of his son? In 1912 Weston specialised in child portraiture - As he said of photographing his son Neil ‘tall for his years, delicately molded, with reed-like flow of unbroken line: rare gray eyes, ingenuous, dreaming, and a crown of silken blond hair. He is a lovely child.” Page 139 ref Weston Day books, pp.118-19 This is a fondness for his child and his intentions are good, however other people such as Crimp may interpret it in a different way- does this mean we shouldn’t take photos of our children that could be interpreted in a different way than our intentions? Someone will always have a different interpretation than another person.
Sally Mann’s photographs of her own children taken in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s that were included in her book “Immediate family” have also been controversial. Her works is discussed in Anne Higonnet “Pictures of Innocence (1998) and as A Higonnet suggests of Sally Mann’s photograph ‘Jessie at 5 sends signs that used to convey two conflicting messages: childhood innocence and adult sexuality. A Higonnet (1998) pages 194-95.
Sally Mann says of her own work. ‘These are photographs of my own children living their lives here too. Many of these pictures are intimate, some are fictions and some are fantastic, but most are of ordinary things every mother has seen – a wet bed, a bloody nose, candy cigarettes. They dress up they pout and posture, they paint their bodies, they dive like otters in the dark river […..] We are spinning a story of what it is to grow up. It is a complicated story and sometimes we try to take on the grand themes: anger, love, death, sensuality, and beauty. But we tell it all without shame.’ S Mann ‘immediate family’ Her work has been controversial not only because of her subject, but because some of her images are staged and may be considered ambiguous.
One of her photographs of her daughter Virginia was censored I an exhibition in photo America one image of her 4-year-old daughter (Virginia at 4 was censored by the [[Wall Street Journal]]with black bars over her eyes, nipples and pubic area.’’The Wall Street Journal’’, February 6, 1991. “Critique: Censoring Virginia,” By Ray Sokolov, p A10. . Posted on August 16, 2010 by anette skuggedal
‘Placed at the intersection of private and public worlds, a photograph elicits an eminently subjective response. Photographers are therefore the source of endless debates and conflicts that often end up in court(.....) It is all a question of how the pictures are interpreted, of the meaning that is read into them. ‘The right to photograph’ Daniel Girardin(2008). Press release Controversies, a legal and ethical history of photography, Musee de L’Elysee
There has been a continuing debate and controversy about images of children. In 2001 Tierney Gearon had her first exhibited in the Saatchi gallery and found herself being confronted by the child protection act. Her images are of her own children on the beach and in the snow, they are family snap shots and I can’t see what her children need to be protected from. Guardian.co.uk (2001) Photo
The Australian photographer Bill Henson, has always been controversial, and has had numerous exhibitions where he has shown naked adolescence from junkies to teenagers sprawled over cars. So when 20 of his photographs were confiscated by the Child Protection and Sex Crimes Unit, it was a bit of a shock. The subjects are all naked or partially dressed, as were his previous images. As discussed by the Guardian.Co.uk art and design blog ‘over two millennia of Western art attests to the principle that the nude -of whatever age- is not obscene per se. On the contrary, it’s a legitimate and accepted field of artistic representation.’ Shane Danielsen Tuesday 27 May 2008 Guardian.Co.uk art and design blog.
In This recent case the Prime minister of Australia has even been involved. Kevin ‘Rudd told a national TV network that he considered the images “absolutely revolting. What ever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff – frankly, I don’t think there are any – just allow kids to be kids” Shane Danielsen Tuesday 27 May 2008 Guardian.Co.uk art and design blog. Should these issues of artists pushing boundaries be a political issue?
It’s not just practicing photographers that have been affected by the issues surrounding photographing children. Parents have found themselves being banned from taking photos of there own children in school. ‘We were told in a newsletter “we will no longer permit the use of video, photographs or mobile phone camera pictures of any children by parents/carers/visitors during performances and school events”.” […..] The photographs of children with eyes blacked out were issued in ‘yearbooks’ given to the parents of four year olds in the school nursery. Photographs of classroom activities were enclosed, but teachers had blacked out the eyes of all the children other than the parents’ own. Neil Sears, ‘Nativity blackout’ MailOnline November 2010. Photo The school was worried that the childrens faces would be superimposed on obscene internet images. Even a parent was asked to stop taking photographs of his son playing football and was told it was against the child protection laws. He was also accused of being a paedophile it was reported by the BBC in 2006. I think the quote from Pictures of innocence fits well here. “now all pictures of children – clothed, unclothed, documentary, altered or completely artificially generated, artistic, commercial or taken by their own parents – are implicated by child pornography law provisions’. Page 106
It seems that you are seen as guilty of pornography, peadophilia, or inciting perverts to look at these images, without really being considered innocent of just wanting to take photographs of children for art or for a record of their growth.
We need to look at what else has been going on in the world to understand the issue of sexualisation of children, as it is not just in the art world, is has been prevalent in the media over the past year. The Guardian, BBC and The Independent are among some who have run articles about this issue. The NSPCC, Psychologists, and even the Prime Minister, David Cameron has had a something to say about this topic.
In the Independent in January 2010 David Cameron protested that young children were subject to “premature sexualisation” and “arbitrary violence” in the media. “It’s high time the children’s market and advertisers show much more restraint in the way they operate.” Nigel Morris, January 2010
These articles come after a report for the Government by Dr. Linda Papadopoulos was published. ‘Her report describes a world where young girls who can barely walk are first cajoled into wearing high heels and t-shirts with Playboy motifs before progressing into a grim future dominated by an internet-based youth culture that presserises them into dressing and behavior which defines them overwhelmingly as sexual objects’ Editorial The Guardian [online] (2010)
Dr Eileen L. Zurbriggen, who is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) produced a similar report in 2007. She has be quoted on the BBC saying ‘ We have apple evidence to conclude that sexualisation has a negative effect in a varity of domains, including cognitive function, physical and mental health, and healthy sexual development”[…] ‘we need to replace all of these sexualised images with ones showing girls in positive settings-ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls” Dr Eileen Zurbriggen BBC [online] editorial “Sexualisation harms young girls”.
The reason for mentioning these reports is to highlight the issues there are in our society that feel the need for girls to wear padded bras, Playboy t-shirts, aspire to be like a Bratz or Barbi doll on their websites. This is a massive subject that I can’t go into in this essay, but feel it is important to put it into context with the cases of photographer’s work being censored because they are deemed too sexual. We can sit with our children on a Saturday night and watch ‘scantily clad female artists gyrating on stage.’ BBC [online] 2010 but we can’t view photographs taken by renowned artists.
We now live in a world where technology plays a massive part in our lives. Most households have a camera, mobile phone and access to the Internet. We can take a photograph and immediately put it on the web, and send it all around the world, with little or no censorship. This has made it possible for paedophiles to use the web to groom children, to entice other people to join them in their sick ideas and to create child pornography ring. These are really issues, as seen in the case of the nursery school worker sexually assaulting children and distributing indecent photographs of children that were taken on a camera phone inside the nursery. S Morris Observer [online] (2009) It was later discovered that the women involved had been persuaded to go along with these terrible sexual acts by a man she had befriended online.
Just last week, the largest child pornography ring was busted by police in the Netherlands as reported on radio Netherlands worldwide website.
The way we now distribute and view images using the World Wide Web is discussed in Practices of looking, an introduction to visual culture by Marita Strurken and Lisa Cartwright. Anne Higonnet also talks about the problem of control of our images and how the Internet has changed this. “Pictures can be and are posted for a potential audience of random millions on the Internet without their makers’ knowledge or consent, and once on the internet, they can be captioned, classified, marketed and sold indiscriminately. The private domain of pictures has become prey to public use,’ A Higonnet (1998) page 143
Summery
It seems that images of children and childhood changed with the discovery of photography and that the issues about sexualisation of children and the innocence of childhood has changed greatly in the last 20 years. This could be caused by a combination of the Internet, the pornography laws including images in the definition of pornography and the way the media are over sexualising young girls. We have defiantly become more paranoid about the safety of our children and most kids spend their time in the safety of their own homes rather than playing out. Have we become this way because there are paedophiles, lurking around every corner, and people are using images of our children inappropriately on the Internet, or is it that these issues are so widely covered by the media, which in turn are accessible in so many ways, we hear about them more. Where actually there are probably no more cases than there were 30 years ago when I was a young girl playing out in the street.
We are lucky that in our society our children are protected in so many ways, but we cannot keep them completely safe and shelter to the reality of life. On one hand we are encouraging them to grow up and move into little sexual adults and on the other we feel the need to control artists free expression of childhood and adolescence as they see it.
It is true that photographs of children are being used in an inappropriate ways, but should we think all images of children as suspect.
Some photographer’s work is questionable in my eyes, like Lewis Carroll, David Hamilton for example, but some are just pushing boundaries and are making us question their images, like Sally Mann and Bill Henson. Is it wrong for artists to be controversial? Other photographer’s work seems to be just completely what they are, like Tierney Gearon and Edward Weston.
If no one is being hurt or abused in anyway what is wrong with photographic images of naked children is it because of how we view photographs differently from paintings? As observed by Anne Higonnet, ‘we first need to consider the distinction between photography and other visual media. Is it always so clear that photographs are about reality while other forms of expression do not involve real people or situations?’ A Higonnet (1998) page 164
Have we become a nanny state and we expect the government to do something about it as well as Politicians having to be seen doing the ‘right’ thing. Kevin Rudd, David Cameron…
It’s a knee jerk reaction to the problems there are with online paedophile rings and grooming that has been going on online, because they are in the public eye they can be made example of
David Marr – ‘why can’t we just disapprove, or approve or something
These controversies have been prevalent since the 90’s, so only 2 decades….
· ‘I don’t want to raise my children in a world governed by fear, especially not fear of what childhood might mean” page 14
· we are living through a major change in our culture’s understanding of childhood” (page 8)
· The madness of technology – where are we heading –
· Tom Cruise film – ‘Minority report’
· Sally Mann – ambiguity
· Pedophiles – greater population so seems like more
· more coverage so seems like more
· no more attacks than when I was young
· images are more accessible through www
· over paraonoid society
Susan Sontag On photography to heavy going for me
Controversies A legal and ethical history of photography – Press Release - curated by Daniel Giardin, curator at the Musee de L’Eysee and Christian Pirker, barrister in Geneva
Female chauvinist pigs women and the rise of raunch culture Ariel Levy 2005 free press
Anne Higonnet (1998). Pictures of innocent - The history and crisis of childhood. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.
Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright (2001). Practices of looking - an introduction to visual culture. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.
Page 87???????
(Sally Mann)
The Guardian. (2005) The Guardian [online] http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2005/jun/23/photography.art
Sally Mann (1992). Immediate family. London: Phaidon Press Ltd.
’’The Wall Street Journal’’, February 6, 1991. “Critique: Censoring Virginia,” By Ray Sokolov, p A10. . Posted on August 16, 2010 by anette skuggedal
(Tierney Gearon)
Jonathon Jones. (2001). Family snapshots show a peculiar art. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/mar/10/jonathanjones?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487. Last accessed 21st March
Bill Henson
Shane Danielsen. (2008). These photographs aren't sexual: They're just human. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/artblog/2008/may/27/thesephotographsarentsexual. Last accessed 21st March
David Cameron
Sexualisation
BBC Dr E Zur… Sexualisation harms young girls”
Nativity
BBC [online]
14 December 2010 ‘X Factor complaints to Ofcom reach 1,000 mark’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11991050
S Morris Observer[online] (2009)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/10/nursery-worker-charged
child porn ring
16/03/2011 John Tyler
Chris Warmoll. (2005). Hamilton's naked girl shots ruled 'indecent'. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2005/jun/23/photography.art. Last accessed 21st March 2011.
Have we become a society that is afraid to take and look at photographs of children?
ESSAY
Biddy Dymond
Why have we become so fearful about the depiction of children in photographs? Is it right to be concerned about children increasingly being shown in a sexualised way in photography and the media? Has our, the viewers, interpretation of images of children changed? Those are the questions I will try to answer or at least understand a little better through this piece of writing.
There appears to be increasing coverage in the media about concerns regarding the sexualisation of our children. There have been articles REF about some interesting and seemingly extreme reactions in the name of child protection to parents capturing moments in their children’s lives. These events are often public, and they are simply recording their child’s first nativity play or a football game.
As a society should we be scared to take photographs of our own children as they grow and change? Being a mother and a photographer means I take photographs of children, both my own and other peoples. The increasing focus on ethics regarding images of children suggests paranoia about this, as if we are doing something wrong. I’m interested in exploring what responsibility people working in the creative world have when depicting children, what images are appropriate, inappropriate, indecent, or even pornographic, and in whose opinion.
Images of children have caused controversy throughout our history; especially in the 20th Century, with such photographers as Mapplethorpe REF Garry Goss’s photographs of Brooke Shields REF, Sally Mann’s ‘Immediate Family’ REF and more recently, Australian photographer Bill Henson REF.
Prior to the changes in the law in the late 1980’s, early 1990’s photographs of naked children were not considered pornographic. In ‘Pictures of Innocence’ Higonnet states that. ‘Nudity is not an action. Nudity might imply or suggest an action involving the person pictured and the person taking the photo, but it is not in and of itself an action, let alone a criminal action.’ (Higonnet,1998:161-162.) Did the law change because of the increase in sexualised images of children? Or were we being made more aware of naked images of children and adolescence because of a change in the law?
During the Italian Renaissance naked boys were featured frequently, as in Michelangelo and Donatello’s ‘David’. The depiction of these adolescents is a romanticised ideal created by the artists.
Religious conditioning, during the Renaissance, validated images of naked children, in a religious context maybe could only be perceived as innocent. For example putti, as Raphael’s from ‘Sistine Madonna’ 1513-14
(Fig 1)With the advent of the industrial revolution Victorians had more money and leisure time than generations before REF CHI LECTURE. Pictorial styles in art moved onto Impressionism. Artists were creating their painting from an emotional response to the subject matter; children were depicted engaging in everyday activities. Photography became more accessible in this era and photographers increasingly produced extensive numbers of romanticised images of children. (Higonnet,1998:110.) Photography as a medium and process was in its infancy so early images drew largely on the history of representation of paintings for inspiration.
Lewis Carroll photographed young girls that were, at the time, considered innocent in a Romantic way. ‘Carroll insisted his camera, being a mechanically automatic, could do nothing but capture the truth of childhood, which, he also insisted, was inherently innocent’. (Higonnet,1998:10)
Nowadays these photographs can potentially be read in a dubious light. Although proposed as ‘innocent’ Higonnet suggests that Carroll’s photographs of Evelyn Hatch ‘would not have been ambiguous to Victorian audiences. Then as now, her reclining odalisque pose clearly signaled adult and available feminine sexuality’ (Higonnet,1998:123.)
(Fig 5)The meaning of images change over time and what may have seemed innocent at one time in history can be read differently now.
Photos- Jessie Mcbride and Rosie
There are many photographers whose work and who themselves become the subject of controversy when photographing children. These include Mapplethorpe’s photograph, ‘Jessie McBride’ and ‘Rosie’, which were displayed along side his well know sado-masochistic images REF or Gary Goss’ photographs of Brooke Shields. REF
Jock Sturges and David Hamilton have also been accused of producing pornography, or have been the center of a controversy as a result of photographing children. Their photographs are predominantly of adolescent children, who are on the cusp of adulthood.
David Hamilton’s work is mostly of semi naked adolescent girls in rather provocative poses, akin to adult imagery. His book ‘The age of innocence’ was withdrawn from WHSmith a UK high street chain, after Hamilton’s photographs were deemed indecent. During the case, in 2005, of Stanley Loam, who claimed to have a genuine interest in artistic material and was charged with being in possession of 19,000 indecent images of children of which included Hamilton’s book.
Hamilton’s work was judged, by prosecutor Simon Connally to be of a sexual nature, which could not be described as artistic. In light of this case it means that one could be arrested for possessing a David Hamilton book. (The Guardian website,2005)
In April 1990 there was an investigation into Sturges’ work, which is said to have cost the American taxpayers over a million dollars (Higonnet 2008:191). Sturge’s photographs are of both naked girls and naked boys shot outside, in woods, on the beach and in the water. Sturges’ images are of naked, even naturist, children. He says “All my life I’ve taken photographs of people who are completely at peace being what they were in the situations I photographed them in. In very many cases that was without clothes, and it was simply not an issue. They were without clothes when I got there and they were without clothes when I left […] It never occurred to me that anybody could find anything about that perverse”. (Steinberg 1998)
Anne Higonnet comments on the reporting of Sturges to authorities by a photo processor thus. Photo processors work in a void that can only be filled by their own tastes and, now, with the assumption that all photographs of children’s bodies are guilty until they are proven innocent. (Higonnet, 1998:191)
Photographers have included their own children in their portfolios of work for many years, Edward Weston series ‘Neil’ REF and the images from Sally Mann’s book ‘Immediate family’ REF are among some of the best known.
Edward Weston’s ‘Neil’ series 1925 came out of the modernist approach to abstraction. Photos They were at the time read, in the context of his other abstract black and white photographs of plants and vegetables as making the subject less important than the image created and were considered ‘some of the most highly acclaimed photographs of a child ever taken’, (Higonnet, 1998:114.)
However, in 1990 art critic Douglas Crimp said it was possible to read ‘in Weston’s posing, framing and lighting the young Neil so as to render his body as a classical sculpture – the long-established codes of homo-eroticism.’ (Crimp,1990:137)
Would Weston have had this intention when taking these photographs of his son? In 1912 Weston specialised in child portraiture - As he said of photographing his son Neil ‘at eight years he was in the flower of unawakened days before adolescence tall for his years, delicately moulded, with reed-like flow of unbroken line: rare gray eyes, ingenuous, dreaming, and a crown of silken blond hair. He is a lovely child.’ (Higonnet,1998:139 ref Weston Day books, pp.118-19) His fondness for his child and his stated intentions seemed honourable, however other people may interpret these images in a different way. The responsibility for an audience’s interpretation of any image or text surely does not rest entirely with its creator?
Sally Mann’s photographs of her own children taken in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s that were included in her book “Immediate family” REF have also been considered controversial. Higonnet suggests of Sally Mann’s photograph ‘Jessie at 5 sends signs that used to convey two conflicting messages: childhood innocence and adult sexuality. (Higonnet,1998:194-95.) Photo
Sally Mann says of her own work. ‘These are photographs of my own children living their lives here too. Many of these pictures are intimate, some are fictions and some are fantastic, but most are of ordinary things every mother has seen – a wet bed, a bloody nose, candy cigarettes. They dress up, they pout and posture, they paint their bodies, they dive like otters in the dark river […] We are spinning a story of what it is to grow up. It is a complicated story and sometimes we try to take on the grand themes: anger, love, death, sensuality, and beauty. But we tell it all without shame.’ (Mann,1992.)
Mann’s work has been controversial not only because of her subject, but because some of her ambiguous images are staged, which could challenge the viewers interpretation of childhood ‘innocents’. REF Mann 1992 book
In 1992? The Wall Street Journal censored one of Mann’s photographs. It was an image of her daughter Virginia.
‘The nudity of the children has caused problems for many publications, including this one. When The Wall Street Journal ran a photograph of then-4-year-old Virginia, it censored her eyes, breasts and genitals with black bars.‘ […] ‘has she [Mann] knowingly put them [her children] at risk by releasing these pictures into a world where pedophilia exists? Can young children freely give their consent for controversial portraits, even if -- especially if -- the artist is their parent?’ (Woodman,1992)
put censored image hereIn 2001 Tierney Gearon, the American photographer exhibited her work as part the exhibition ‘I Am A Camera’ at the Saatchi Gallery in London and found herself being challenged by the police, who claimed her photos were in contravention of the child protection act. Her images are of her own children on the beach and in the snow and in contrast to some of Mann’s are, she insists, family snap shots, unposed and spontaneous. Interestingly in the images the children’s faces are concealed, by goggles or masks. (Guardian 2001)
The censoring of this ‘innocent’, naked image of a four-year-old girl has changed it. This arguably makes the audience perceive it as sinister, inappropriate, shameful, because of the intertextual connotations
The Australian photographer Bill Henson has had numerous exhibitions where he has shown images of naked adolescents to international acclaim. So when the Child Protection and Sex Crimes Unit confiscated 20 of his photographs in 2005, it was a surprise. The subjects in the confiscated photographs are all naked or partially dressed adolescents, as were his previous images. Art critics decried this move by the authorities stating that ‘over two millennia of Western art attests to the principle that the nude -of whatever age- is not obscene per se. On the contrary, it’s a legitimate and accepted field of artistic representation.’ (Danielsen, 2008.)
Kevin Rudd, Australia’s Prime minister became involved in the debate telling a national TV network that he considered the images “absolutely revolting. What ever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff – frankly, I don’t think there are any – just allow kids to be kids” (Danielson, 2008). Should these issues of artists pushing boundaries be a political issue? If politicians, who speak for their countries, voice their opinions in this way on art, it becomes a political issue. The people may then well expect legislation to be put in place by their elected representatives to prevent this kind of work be displayed in the future. Whereas if an art critic finds the work of Henson to be indecent or “revolting” it is solely the opinion of that person, who may well have kudos in the art world, but does not have the power to stop the work being shown.
It’s not just practicing photographers that have been affected by the issues surrounding photographing children. Parents have found themselves being banned from taking photos of their own children in school. ‘We were told in a newsletter “we will no longer permit the use of video, photographs or mobile phone camera pictures of any children by parents/carers/visitors during performances and school events”.” […..] The photographs of children with eyes blacked out were issued in ‘yearbooks’ given to the parents of four year olds in the school nursery. Photographs of classroom activities were enclosed, but teachers had blacked out the eyes of all the children other than the parents’ own. (Sears, 2010.)
The school justified this position as a response to being worried that the children’s faces would be superimposed on obscene Internet images. REF A parent was asked to stop taking photographs of his son playing football and told it was against the child protection laws. REF He was even accused of being a paedophile, it was reported by the REF BBC in 2006. “Now all pictures of children – clothed, unclothed, documentary, altered or completely artificially generated, artistic, commercial or taken by their own parents – are implicated by child pornography law provisions’. (Higonnet,1998:106)
This proposes that the photographer and viewer are seen as guilty of pornography, paedophilia, or inciting perverts to look at these images; that just wanting to take photographs of children for art or for a record of their growth is not a legitimate or benign activity.
To understand the issue of sexualisation of children it is not just in the art world where these issues have arisen. The subject has been prevalent in the media over the past year. The Guardian, the BBC and The Independent are among those who have run articles about this issue. The NSPCC, Psychologists and the Prime Minister, have had something to say about this topic.
In the Independent in January 2010 David Cameron protested that young children were subject to “premature sexualisation” and “arbitrary violence” in the media. Stating that “It’s high time the children’s market and advertisers show much more restraint in the way they operate.” (Morris, 2010)
After a report for the Government by Dr. Linda Papadopoulos was published in 2010, increasing focus on this issue have been evident ‘Her report describes a world where young girls who can barely walk are first cajoled into wearing high heels and t-shirts with Playboy motifs before progressing into a grim future dominated by an internet-based youth culture that pressurises them into dressing and behavior which defines them overwhelmingly as sexual objects’ (The Guardian 2010)
Dr. Eileen L. Zurbriggen, who is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) produced a similar report in 2007 focused in the U.S. She says ‘ We have ample evidence to conclude that sexualisation has a negative effect in a variety of domains, including cognitive function, physical and mental health, and healthy sexual development”[…] ‘we need to replace all of these sexualised images with ones showing girls in positive settings, ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls” Dr. Eileen Zurbriggen BBC [online] editorial “Sexualisation harms young girls”.
The reason for mentioning these reports is to highlight the broader issue of sexualisation of children. This is a massive subject, which I cannot examine in depth in this essay, but feel it is important to put the issues of photographer’s work being censored because they are deemed too sexual into context. My research continues to question why. Can we sit with our children on a Saturday night and watch ‘scantily clad female artists gyrating on stage.’ (BBC,[online] 2010) but not view photographs taken by renowned artists? Is this because artists are questioning boundaries and our interpretation of images?
We now live in a world where technology plays a massive part in our lives. Most households have a camera, mobile phone and access to the Internet. We can take a photograph and immediately put it on the web, and send it all around the world, with little or no censorship. This has made it possible for paedophiles to use the web to groom children, to entice other people to join them and to create child pornography rings. These are issues, as seen in the recent case, of the nursery school worker sexually assaulting children and distributing indecent photographs of children that were taken on a camera phone inside the nursery. (Morris,2009).
The way we now distribute and view images using the World Wide Web is discussed in ‘Practices of looking, an introduction to visual culture’ by Marita Strurken and Lisa Cartwright. Anne Higonnet also talks about the problem of control of our images and how the Internet has changed this. ‘Pictures can be and are posted for a potential audience of random millions on the Internet without their makers’ knowledge or consent, and once on the internet, they can be captioned, classified, marketed and sold indiscriminately. The private domain of pictures has become prey to public use,’ A Higonnet (1998) page 143
Summary NOT FINISHED, my thoughts
It seems that images of children and childhood changed with the discovery of photography and that the issues about sexualisation of children and the innocence of childhood has changed greatly in the last 20 years. This could be caused by a combination of the Internet, the pornography laws including images in the definition of pornography and the way the media are seemly sexualising everything.
We have defiantly become more paranoid about the safety of our children and most kids spend their time in the safety of their own homes rather than playing out. Have we become this way because there are paedophiles, lurking around every corner, and people are using images of our children inappropriately on the Internet, or is it that these issues are so widely covered by the media, which in turn are accessible in so many ways, we hear about them more. Where actually there are probably no more cases than there were 30 years ago when I was a young girl playing out in the street.
On one hand we are encouraging children to grow up and move into little sexual adults and on the other we feel the need to control artists free expression of their interpretation of childhood and adolescence.
It is true that photographs of children are being used in an inappropriate ways, but should we think all images of children as suspect.
Some photographer’s work may be questionable, like Lewis Carroll and David Hamilton for example, but some are just pushing boundaries and are making us question their images, like Sally Mann and Bill Henson. Is it wrong for artists to be controversial? Other photographer’s work seems to be just completely what they are, like Tierney Gearon and Edward Weston.
If no one is being hurt or abused in anyway what is wrong with photographic images of naked children is it because of how we view photographs ‘Placed at the intersection of private and public worlds, a photograph elicits an eminently subjective response. Photographers are therefore the source of endless debates and conflicts that often end up in court (.....) It is all a question of how the pictures are interpreted, of the meaning that is read into them. ‘The right to photograph’ (Girardin, 2008) Press release Controversies, a legal and ethical history of photography, Musee de L’Elysee
Have we become a nanny state and we expect the government to do something about it as well as Politicians having to be seen doing the ‘right’ thing. Kevin Rudd, David Cameron…
It’s a knee jerk reaction to the problems there are with online paedophile rings and grooming that has been going on online, because this work is in the public eye they can be made example of ….?
The inclusion of naked images of children within the pornography law assumes that all images of naked children are erotic and intend to cause sexual excitement in the viewer, as defined in the English dictionary. REF
It seems that to prevent the missuse or unintended interpretation of images of children there would have to be legislations in place to police the viewer’s response.
There seems to be a cultural shift in our society that could mean we are losing the idea of childhood innocents. ‘I don’t want to raise my children in a world governed by fear, especially not fear of what childhood might mean” (Higonnet,1998:14)
David Marr quote from Art Ethics and the law-David Marr FORA.tv ABC 22nd May 2009 – ‘why can’t we just disapprove, or approve or something, why do we expect the government to do something about it
Stuff and quotes
· The photographic gaze thus helps to establish relationships of power. The person with a camera looks at a person, event, place, or object. The act of looking is commonly thought of as awarding more power to the person who is looking than to the person who is the object of the look. Page 100 practices of looking
‘Placed at the intersection of private and public worlds, a photograph elicits an eminently subjective response. Photographers are therefore the source of endless debates and conflicts that often end up in court(.....) It is all a question of how the pictures are interpreted, of the meaning that is read into them. ‘The right to photograph’ Daniel Girardin(2008). Press release Controversies, a legal and ethical history of photography, Musee de L’Elysee
· ‘I don’t want to raise my children in a world governed by fear, especially not fear of what childhood might mean” page 14
· we are living through a major change in our culture’s understanding of childhood” (page 8)
· The madness of technology – where are we heading –
· Tom Cruise film – ‘Minority report’
· Sally Mann – ambiguity
· Pedophiles – greater population so seems like more
· more coverage so seems like more
· no more attacks than when I was young
· images are more accessible through www
· over paraonoid society
NOT FINISHED blue should be right – not sure how to link to the actual quote or reference
· Anne Higonnet (1998). Pictures of innocent - The history and crisis of childhood. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.
· Chris Warmoll. (2005). Hamilton's naked girl shots ruled 'indecent'. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2005/jun/23/photography.art. Last accessed 21st March 2011.
· Jonathon Jones. (2001). Family snapshots show a peculiar art. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/mar/10/jonathanjones?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487. Last accessed 21st March
· Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright (2001). Practices of looking - an introduction to visual culture. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.
· Richard B. Woodward. (1992).The Disturbing Photography of Sally Mann’. Available: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9e0ce5d61e38f934a1575ac0a964958260&&scp=1&sq=sally%20mann%20virginia%20censorship&st=cse. Last accessed 22/03/2011.
· Sally Mann (1992). Immediate family. London: Phaidon Press Ltd.
· Bill Henson-Shane Danielsen. (2008). These photographs aren't sexual: They're just human. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/artblog/2008/may/27/thesephotographsarentsexual. Last accessed 21st March
· Susan Sontag On photography to heavy going for me
· Controversies A legal and ethical history of photography – Press Release - curated by Daniel Giardin, curator at the Musee de L’Eysee and Christian Pirker, barrister in Geneva
· Female chauvinist pigs women and the rise of raunch culture Ariel Levy 2005 free press (not quoted, but might)
· (Hamilton)
The Guardian. (2005) The Guardian [online] http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2005/jun/23/photography.art
David Cameron, Nigel Morris, January 2010
· Tierney Gearon defends her photographs
This article appeared on p2 of the G2 section of the Guardian on Tuesday 13 March 2001. It was published on guardian.co.uk at 09.04 GMT on Tuesday 13 March 2001. It was last modified at 01.21 BST on Friday 13 June 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2001/mar/13/childprotection
· Sexualisation
· BBC Dr E Zur… Sexualisation harms young girls”
· Neil Sears, ‘Nativity blackout’ MailOnline November 2010.
· BBC [online]
14 December 2010 ‘X Factor complaints to Ofcom reach 1,000 mark’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11991050
· S Morris Observer [online] (2009)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/10/nursery-worker-charged
· child porn ring
16/03/2011 John Tyler
· Page 137 ref Douglas Crimp1990 ‘The boys in my bedroom’ Neils
· The New York Times magazine website R.Woodman (1992). Virginia
· Guardian.Co.uk art and design blog S Danielsen 2008. Bill Henson
· ‘Bay Area photographer Jock Sturges talks back to the Southern judges, the FBI and the right-wing Christians who would like to ban his work’
By David Steinberg
·
