In the wake of the controversy over the Vanity Fair photographs of 15 year old Miley Cyrus, which photographer Annie Leibowitz defended as “simple” and “beautiful”, Sydney has had a taste of the controversy about artistic representations of adolescent bodies with the opening of celebrated photographer Bill Henson’s latest exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Paddington. Henson’s exhibition includes photographs of 12 and 13 year old unclothed models, taken with their and their parents’ consent.
Miranda Devine was quick out of the starting blocks to loudly condemn:
Such images presenting children in s*xual contexts are so commonplace these days they seem almost to have lost the capacity to shock.
The effort over many decades by various groups - artists, perverts, academics, libertarians, the media and advertising industries, respectable corporations and the pr0n industry - to smash taboos of previous generations and define down community standards, has successfully eroded the special protection once afforded childhood.
Miranda modified to be safer for work.
Well, there you have it. As Devine observes, there is currently a Senate inquiry into the sexualisation of children and adolescents in the media, which was an initiative of Democrats Leader Lyn Allison.
Aside from the highly questionable narrative implied in Devine’s claim (and it’s noteable that she doesn’t go on to refer to Henson’s photographs further in what is quite a long article), what’s interesting is the inattention to context and the elision of art with commercial representations - whose motivations are more likely to be about making money than some avant-garde attempt to shock the bourgeoisie, if indeed it still exists as such. (And incidentally, I think Miranda is stuck in a sort of modernist time warp in terms of how she thinks about artistic motivations!)
And what is a “sexual context” in the context of these images?
Henson’s artistic interest is in adolescence as a time of metamorphosis which exposes the tensions and strains of living in a body, of being embodied, and of a certain relation of the psyche to the body. He eschews statements of political or sociological intent, though he’s aware that audiences may read such statements into his work. He invites reflection on times of transition, and what it feels like to undergo change. His images are classical and painterly, and ethereal.
His work deserves a lot better than the treatment that Miranda Devine has afforded it. Her response is typical of an inability to understand the complex interactions of the aesthetic and the social, and in my view, constitutes a deliberate blindness - a refusal to see. The gaze of the viewer is also implicated in Henson’s work, of course, but what’s seen through that lens might say more about the beholder than the art.
You can view the current exhibition online here.
Update: You can’t any more, because it looks like Miranda has taken the scalp she wanted, and the gallery is under police investigation.
Elsewhere: More at Junk for Code.
Update: Comments on this thread are now closed, and the issues raised here and in further discussion of the so-called “debate” that’s erupted in the public sphere after charges were laid against Henson and the Gallery can proceed at this thread.
How is it so shocking that Mylie was on the cover with that sheet when she and all the other little poppetts get aorund in dresses that would certainly get her let into any licenced club in Australia.
But she’s all about Jesus just like Britney was, right? poor girl
http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news?id=41303
Not that I should bother even responding to Devine. But seriously, what a load of shit. In sociological terms, this ’special protection’ is as old as a newly-hatched mayfly, and in any kind of real sense is of a patchy and inconsistently applied nature, anyway.
Besides, Devine seems blind to the implication that perhaps the hysteria - and the fetishing - that we see (or may participate in) is a symptom of said ’special protection’, rather than a sign of its demise. This is how fetishes are born. Heh. She should read some Fouccault (no. I take that back, I wouldn’t with that on anyone).
Oh dear.
Those Henson images are stunning. Being the owner/operator of a child starting her adolescence, I think he captures the awkwardness and the “letting go” of childhood near perfectly. That blossoming self awareness and (at times) painful acknowledgment of change. Shit, I think I’ll have a little cry now.
Devine is an idiot. Anyone who views those images as sexual fodder is a sicko.
Yes, he’s an amazing artist.
“..Anyone who views those images as sexual fodder is a sicko..”
Definately, but where does art end and the gratification of a sicko begin? The artists intent isnt to give fodder to perverts, but probably is. Does that make the art “bad” or irresponsible?
What if that art was used on a billboard to advertise something, would it cease to be art and become pervert fodder then?
Should certain pictures be off limits, or does the prevalence of porn (both sicko and normal) make it all a moot point anyway?
IMOHO certain things should be off limits, absolutely, to artists/perverts/pornographers and advertisers alike. Because the boundary blurs and thats where the bad men are.
But it wouldn’t be. Henson is an internationally renowned art photographer. He’s not taking photos to flog to advertisers.
Ok, what if it is printed on a mass circulation magazine cover about the artist? My point was even if the artist intended it as serious art, it will tickle the fancy of a pervert.
The same goes for any material once it entrs the public domain. Id be willing to bet money that some of the pictures from this exibition will be found on a pedophiles computer tommorrow. Not because the artist intended it to, but because its now public.
Why wouldnt some pervert be able to pass off his thai “happy snaps” of naked kids as art, that defence has been tried before.
Im just much happier having a definate “line in the sand” on issues like this, abuguity is hazardous.
Mole wrote:
I don’t think so. The problem as I see it is that while in a sexual context, nudity can be arousing, that doesn’t make nudity automatically arousing in every context, especially when the subject isn’t sexually mature.
While we know that there are a (small) percentage of men who are aroused by images that contain no sexual content (i.e. sexual undevelopment), there is absolutely no need to re-contextualize every non-sexual image just for those people. When Devine approaches these kinds of images in this way, she seeks to whip up a moral panic which just makes parenting harder. It’s tough enough to bring up adolescent girls as it is without making them instant sexual objects in every place they appear.
I think the Miley Cyrus/Disney machine treads a pretty fine line in making “family friendly” entertainment as it is without turning their commercial focus into prurient interest in the poppets on display. You just can’t stop the tweenagers from developing breasts, very publically and awkwardly on TV. That isn’t the problem though, it’s the automatic association of breasts and sex (innapropriately in this case) thats the problem.
Counter intuitively, perhaps more relaxed attitudes to nudity would help, but our advertising agencies and TV/movie producers have a vested interest in ensuring that nudity=sex=sales, so I’m plumb out of ideas on what exactly can be done about it. It makes me a little sad that girls are now not allowed to feel comfortable in their own bodies.
Mole, perverts’ fancies are by definition easily tickled. That’s why they’re perverts.
You can’t have society constantly guarding against somebody taking sick pleasure in things the rest of us see as healthy and normal—that way lies paranoia.
Well, maybe an education in the art of The Nude from classical times to the present in our schools so these kind of images aren’t sexualised or claimed to be sexual by idiots like Devine, who is obviously just trying to stir sh*t anyway.But then again, that would take years to take effect.
(I can’t think of a period in the history of art from Ancient Greece onward, where some-one hasn’t painted/drawn/sculpted teenage girls nude.)
Word Liam. By your definition Mole, any child should be kept from the general public until the reach adulthood for fear of encouraging paedophilia.
I remember a friend of mine worrying about taking her (very young) daughter to the beach - because ‘perverts’ might see.
Though it wasn’t exactly the response she was looking for, I told her to take a more utilitarian approach to it. If some dude looking at kids at the beach goes home and gets his jollies, whilst parent, child et al. are unaware, is that really any justification for robbing your kid of the totally awesome beach experience? What will cause the most harm to the child in the long run, never going to the beach? Or going to the beach?
God, people are so caught up on perverts, you’d think they were bloody lurking behind every door. I blame Today Tonight for this hysteria. Someone should do an expose.
Oh, sorry, Byzantium is an exception, I think.
Actally the idea of normalising nudity seems the best idea. I hadnt even considered that!
On the other hand, the subject matter here is inherently edgy, which is part of its point. It’s hardly the same as someone taking artistic photos of sheep or shoes and unwittingly giving fuel to bestiality pervs or foot fetishists, because the whole point is the crossing of a threshold, and thus exploration of the boundary, between innocence and experience. Or more straightforwardly between pre-sexuality and being “ready for sex”.
On my reading, (a big) part of what we’re being asked to do is consider the subject’s experience of awakening sexuality. Still totally fair game as far as I’m concerned, as long as the subjects know what they’re being asked to do and why.
Clive Hamilton will be choking on his cornflakes.
Concern about this is based on the idea that nudity is automatically sexualising, which is a strange case to make.
But I think it’s interesting to ask how these images would be read in different contexts. Saying that because Henson is a famous art photographer therefore it’s irrelevant doesn’t work. After all, Liebowitz is also a fantastic photographer, but her images for ‘Vanity Fair’ are bascally high class advertising. There isn’t a thick, black line that can be drawn between images which are ‘art’ and images which aren’t. Somewhere in the recesses of my memory is the idea that Henson’s images have been used in ads - I think for Benetton.
Anyway, what a kerfuffle. I find it hard to see paedophiles slavering over these as they are too complex.
FDB wrote:
Why? Why aren’t the images about being ready to do the cleaning and cooking? The development of breasts and pubes isn’t just about sex, FDB.
“The development of breasts and pubes isn’t just about sex, FDB.”
I see you were never a teenaged boy. Interesting…
You have to be really careful here to separate out hysterical responses to child abuse (as in Devine) and the notion that child sexual abuse is rare. It ain’t rare. It remains distressingly common. It is just that most perpetrators are not strangers on a beach but family members, neighbours and friends.
“It is just that most perpetrators are not strangers on a beach but family members, neighbours and friends.”
Exactly. And they’re unlikely to be emboldened to commit such gross acts by seeing an artwork, billboard or TV ad. They do it because they are ill and can’t help themselves, and/or think they can get away with it.
I agree FDB. I don’t necessarily think that child rapists are ‘ill’ in a DSM IV sense, many of them are not and I don’t know how I feel about Henson’s photos, conflicted I guess, but I certainly do not think that they will inspire child rape.
FDB wrote:
Well, FDB, yes I was.
Thankfully, I not any more. It’s an odd process, this “growing up” thing but wow it makes your perspective wider.
Just joshing DR. Like I said, the “awakening sexuality” thing is a major theme in the pics, but not necessarily the only one. In your position, I’m sure the prospect of one extra cleaner/cook around the house is quite compelling! I think most people’s reaction (and that of ALL hetero teen boys!) would be to ponder the models’ sexual status. Because they’re like, nude.
Huhnhhhrr huhuh. He said, like, “nude”.
Indeed Sue. I should have made that more clear. If people want to be glaring suspiciously at anyone, it’s the family or the friend, not some poor schmoe at the beach.
More seriously FDB - no, I don’t think so. When I was a teenage boy, I was interested in girls with, you know, actual sexual maturity. Like Christie Brinkley, say, or that lady writhing around on the car in that Whitesnake video currently stinking up the reality TV show (Tawny Kitaen or whatever she’s called). I understand what you’re saying about the emerging sexuality of the images being a part of why they could be considered edgy, but I think it’s a mistake to take that away as the major message. Most people will do the washing up more than they have sex.
Another thought - I would put these images alongside those of Cherry Hood, whose portraits of very young children I find too painful to contemplate for long. I do not think they are pernicious however, my response is an entirely personal one.
I can’t quite tell if all these subjects are girls or not. If they are all girls, then that has a significance, I think.
I’m reminded of Ella Dreyfus’s photographs of 12 year old boys, which I found more upfront and interesting than Henson’s work.
Su, I’d suggest ‘conflicted’ is probably the response Henson wants, as they are not simple images.
Suz at 29, he frequently photographs adolescent boys similarly. If you google image search him, you’ll find some.
An excellent point, Fine. The social and artistic contexts of nudity are also time and culture dependent, and it’s just too simple to equate nudity with sexuality. Unless you’re Miranda Devine.
Oh sure, Fine, but context is important. Devine’s vision is actually a kind of vulgar postmodernism - an inability to see and read complexity and specificity and an attention only to surfaces and obvious citations.
Any image has an excess which overflows its intended meaning. In the case of self-consciously artistic images, that may be more deliberate. Or not. But policing meanings and representations requires justification.
Bolta chimes in:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/children_exposed/
It really is interesting how the moralizing types will attack artists who take a great deal of care to preserve and respect the dignity of their models and remain silent on the exploitation of adolescent sexual imagery in advertising. It’s hardly surprising that Devine and Bolt do this. They’re both obviously riddled with surplus resentiment toward artists for the very simple reason that they aren’t such.
>
Another martyr to the fundamentalist and dirty minded is Jock Sturges whose Radiant Idetities is a work of startling beauty. Sturges grants his models unprescedented control over the imagery and withdraws the images from view if at some date they feel uncomfortable. However the FBI’s raided his studio on the pretext that he’s a child pornographer. These witless androids haven’t the nouse to recognize that Sturge’s nudes are not entirely of children or adolescents but of humans across the full spectrum of life. Hello?
>
Funnily enough Sally Manne hasn’t been subjected to the same treatment. Women of course don’t have a sexuality and men have nothing but. Says more about these whitebread corpses from the waist down then it does about the targets of their repression.
>
Sturges made a remark in his defense that what the authorities were doing was seeking to make innocence obscene.
>
What all these blockheads refuse to admit is that sexuality is innate. It’s not something one is granted license to after turning 17 and taking a test or something. And it’s not some disease that’s to be avoided at all costs. Adolescents are not children either. I wonder what kind of culture these people want when they wish to hide what is both natural and beautiful as if it were a source of great shame.
>
Well, they’d say, they’re protecting their children. Really? Interesting then isn’t it that the evidence always shows a strong correllation between puritanical repressiveness and sexual exploitation. Open societies are quite the reverse. I myself found Bill Henson’s work when I was an adolescent and fell in love with it and not as masturbation material either.
>
But you can’t get thru to the likes of Mr Bolt. He’s no more chance of understanding art then a virus has of mastering astrophysics. He will persist however in displaying various items of kitsch wallpaper displays of tulips as an example to follow.
The exhibition was cancelled after a visit by police today. That link to the online pics doesnt work either anymore? is that right?
Good point. We should ban the The White Album and The Bible.
>
Just to be safe. It’s okay. We can still enjoy ourselves. We’ll go ’round to Miranda and Andrew’s for scones and tea. Maybe they’ll show some of their emroidery. Pictures of tulips.
>
Noice.
I don’t think the controversy should be that such images act as fodder for perverts but that they sexualise early adolescence. i haven’t seen the images (yeah i know what comes next - therefore of course i’m going to criticise) but if Henson wants to capture the blossoming of childhood into puberty, why is it neccessary to photograph the young things naked? Think people of any age can reveal their essence without taking their clothes off.
Suspect that most people who post at LP haven’t, ever or yet, raised their own children into teenagers, and can still afford to wear these detached, uber-sophisticated attitudes to minors.
And…
To the latter: it’s called art. The study of the nude has been around for millenia. The purpose is sometimes sexual (in the 19th century) but the more liberal the culture (eg ancient Greece, Italian Rennaissance) the more purely aesthetic the reason. The idea that an image of nudity is inherently pornographic is simply prudish. Art can be pornographic (ie sexually arousing) but Henson’s isn’t. At least not intentionally. You want porn in your art? Here’s the guy. Specialised in wedding chamber scenarios for the aristos and high bourgeoisie of Italy some 400 years ago.
>
Henson’s work is dark and it’s beautiful. It spoke to me when I was an adolescent about what I was going thru. If others can’t see the beauty in it that’s reason to pity ‘em. But please be polite and leave those of us that can out of it. Thanks.
>
Photographs don’t sexualise early adolescence. Early adolescence does.
Further to Casey @ #36.
“Nude kids”?
Nakedness is not necessarily sexual. In fact what I’ve seen of the images they are definately less sexual than most of the clothing aimed at the teen and tweenager girls.
It looks as though Miranda and Bolt have been heard. I caught an ad for the news displaying one of the pictures (non existent breasts blacked out) and talking about police interviewing (the parents I think).
(Sigh)
Sheesh!
Really, casey? Do you have a link? And yes, it looks like the photos have been removed from their server. You can still find some of them by doing a google image search on Henson’s name though.
So Devine and Bolt have taken a scalp? How pathetic.
Sorry, have now seen Dr Cat’s link. Hetty Johnson piling on, calling for prosecutions.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/05/22/this-is-not-art/#comment-469958
Where exactly was the “community outrage” in Australia over the Vanity Fair pictures btw? Did anyone much notice?
Are the police going to investigate the Newcastle Council art gallery?
http://www1.newcastle.nsw.gov.au/strangecargo/pages/henson.html
Or the ABC?
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/deepend/features/gallery/gallery2005/gallery/henson.htm
Or the Sydney Morning Herald?
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Arts/Timeless-sculptures-made-with-a-camera/2005/01/10/1105206045369.html
All of which feature Henson’s work with adolescent subjects on their websites.
“Suspect that most people who post at LP haven’t, ever or yet, raised their own children into teenagers, and can still afford to wear these detached, uber-sophisticated attitudes to minors.”
This is a big bit of presumption. I’ve talked to a number of people on here with adult kids. Of course it’s also beside the point. To suggest that those without teenage kids can have no legitimate position on these images (only “detached, uber-sophisticated” positions of irresponsibility) is a lot of garbage. You’re also speaking for a lot of other parents in carrying on with these assumptions.
I’m making the presumption that all of us have been adolescents, and all of us have undergone changes to our bodies, which is the theme of Henson’s work as I outlined in the post.
It has a particular resonance for me because cancer and amputation of a leg followed the onset of puberty in my case.
But clearly he has a serious artistic intent. What the hell is the law on this? How can the cops justify an “investigation”?
I note both NSW & Qld have a very puritanical attitude to nakedness, especially involving those under 16.
I wonder if it’s the political influence of Fred Nile in NSW, and Hetty Johnson channelling Sir Joh in Qld ?
[Where exactly was the “community outrage” in Australia over the Vanity Fair pictures btw? Did anyone much notice?]
Readers comments on news.com.au
Oh yeah, there you go. Bolta’s mob are the community.
[But clearly he has a serious artistic intent. What the hell is the law on this? How can the cops justify an “investigation”?]
In the pre digital camera age, there were several cases of photolab staff reporting parents for taking kiddie pr0n when the parents were just taking their happy snaps of the kids in the bath etc.
The gallery’s website, we now learn, has been referred to the AMCA and is being examined by “Child Protection Internet Unit” detectives according to Lateline.
[The gallery’s website, we now learn, has been referred to the AMCA and is being examined by “Child Protection Internet Unit” detectives according to Lateline.]
THey should’ve hsted the pics overseas, out of the clutches of the ACMA
The kids and their parents are also to be interviewed by the police. What’s likely to be more traumatsing for the kids? Having their photos taken or being interviewed by th epolice and possibly made to feel shame and humiliation. I feel angry about this sort of witch hunt.
Any one else ever see Germaine Greer’s book The Boy, a few years back? I remember finding myself quite conflicted reading it; as a mother, a woman, an artist and social worker.
Never resolved it, mind you.
From the Age:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/22/1066631496604.html"Her new, lavishly illustrated art book about the erotics of boyhood flaunts all the qualities of its author's flawed brilliance and is sure to provoke more than its fair share of debate.
Part of the purpose of her book, Greer tells us, is to "advance women's reclamation of their capacity for, and right to, visual pleasure".
The public recognition and legitimation of female sexual desire in the 20th century should now be refined, she thinks, by the recognition and legitimation of women's right to appreciate male beauty in art.
Unfortunately for men, Greer's vision of male beauty is transient and fleeting. It is typified by the boy "old enough to be capable of a sexual response, but not yet old enough to shave".
"This window of opportunity is not only narrow," she writes, "it is mostly illegal."
Having grown up as part of the nudist movement, the current idea from the Devine-Bolta crowd that all nudity is necessarily pornographic amuses, bemuses and bothers me, because it just ain’t necessarily so.
Certainly, nude bodies posed for the sake of art raise more eyebrows than nude bodies photgraphed playing tennis or volleyball, because there is an interaction with the viewer and the static/posed nude body appears much more vulnerable than a nude body engaged in normal daily activities.
I haven’t seen the images because they’d been taken down before I read Kim’s post, but I certainly can see how the concept of exploring children’s reactions to the bodily changes of puberty could be very profound and with no intent of titillation. However, my beloved who didn’t grow up around nudists finds the idea much more disturbing.
In general, the antidote to our society’s prurient interest in nudity lies in encouraging more casual public nudity involving people just enjoying being in their skin, demonstrating that sexual interactions are not their prime consideration in getting their kit off, not mandating less of it.
That’s an interesting point of comparison, sc, and I can see why those tensions remain unresolved.
The way I see the Henson thing is that it’s somewhat different because his art remains ‘open to interpretation’, whereas Greer’s project is ’self-interpreting’, and that this whole response has happened the wrong way round: if anything it is Greer who is veering towards pederasty.
But I suppose this is the challenge of the photograph: we tend to read photographs as in some way an unmediated contact with reality and self-evidently mimetic (all the while bringing almost all of the meaning with us). This interpretive framework ends up protecting Greer, who is openly advocating certain kinds of visual pleasure - ie she can be ridiculed but not prosecuted - and leaving the troubling, ambiguous photographs of Henson open to censorship and prosecution.
What I find most disturbing is the chain of equivalence we are supposed to accept between a wide range of cultural practices. We are all made part of a shadowy conspiracy between artists, academics, advertisers, perverts and pornographers to make the violation of children acceptable.
This must be banned immediately
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Babies
Tigtog - we are a rather open family, but i vividly remember my daughter when she was 10 suggesting i put some of my nude paintings away during her birthday party “in case some of the mum’s think you are weird”.
(Alas its too late, i thought to myself!)
“I haven’t seen the images because they’d been taken down before I read Kim’s post, but I certainly can see how the concept of exploring children’s reactions to the bodily changes of puberty could be very profound and with no intent of titillation.”
Henson has been troubling us with the same themes for more than three decades. There is lots of his earlier material available online that is more readily appropriated to this panic than the current exhibition. The belatedness of the panic indicates what this is really about: it’s about a certain way of thinking about sex and childhood taking hold, and it has emerged at different sites across the political spectrum, which indicates how powerful it can be. For those of us who are actually concerned about children being sexually abused this is a massive setback for that campaign: the fact that victim advocacy groups are becoming involved shows how easily this new way of thinking can coopt legitimate concern, and render actual abuse once again invisible.
Matilda wrote:
Get fucked.
Civility, David!
I had exactly the same thought last night. Particularly since this will no doubt come to nothing, and the cops probably know that.
I’m sorry mark. That matilda comment got up my date. As has Kevvie’s assessment that the photos were worthless which was a real J-Ho moment. Just when you think societies reins could be loosened a little in the quest for meaning, the numbnuts and fatheads start fulminating again. It angries the blood!
Fine@53,
Yeah. I’ve been concerned at the impact that will have on the kid(s), and parents. What is perhaps even worse from the family point of view, DOCS have been brought in.Can you imagine the impact the fear of being removed from her parents might have on that young girl.
Also pertinent, that, what , for her, was probably a significant artistic achievement has been turned into something ugly by the likes of Devine, Bolt, Channel 10, the morning TV programs, and unforgivably, Kevin Rudd. I mean, he could have said this is a matter for the police and left it at that (presuming the Channel 9 Puppets would have let him do so.)
And think of what she’ll now cop at scnool, with the narrative the exhibition has been given.
As far as I’m concerned, its no longer about whether its kiddie-porn, or not. Its a debate about censorship. I feel like I’m back in the days of America, Hurrah!, Lady Chatterly, Lolita, Oh, Calcutta! etc etc.All those old fights having to be fought again.
Oh, I share your pain, David! I haven’t heard what Rudd said, but I continue to be disappointed whenever PMs are asked questions that have nothing to do with well PM stuff and feel obliged to comment. Rudd should know better.
The police are protecting themselves - it’s basically a PR exercise so they don’t get tarred with the same brush. Devine’s chain of equivalences is constructed from a set of ‘for or against’ questions implicitly offered to each potential link in the chain. Rudd’s response is probably much the same: he doesn’t want to be a link in that chain. In refusing to become a link, however, they confirm the validity of the question. What is needed is for a victims advocacy group, or some other ‘untarred’ position to stand up and say that this is beside the point and obscuring the problem.
That’s why it’s a pity that Hetty Johnson is the “go to” commentator on these issues from the media pov.
People, people, society doesn’t care what convoluted, pseudo-sophisticated theses you come up with to justify why you enjoy looking at children’s private parts.
Society thinks it more important that children be protected from exploitation and that it send a strong, unequivocal message that children will be protected.
Henson gives comfort and encouragement to child molesters, and so do you.
And the other poster is spot on, most of you clearly don’t have children of your own.
“Henson gives comfort and encouragement to child molesters, and so do you.”
Explain how this is the case, PaulW? The burden of proof should be on those who claim such things, not on those accused. It’s not at all self-evident what harm is being done and to whom, or for that matter which criminals are being ‘comforted and encouraged’ and how.
There’s a post on this at Sarsaparilla which compares what’s happening to the culture wars over art (eg. Mapplethorpe) in the US:
http://sarsaparillablog.net/?p=672
I’m not sure the parallel is exact, because the accusations are different, but it looks like we might be in for something similar.
Maybe it’s worth revisiting our thoughts on the sexualisation of children last year, and juxtapose the ideas there with teh ideas here. I know everyone is a bit emotional about this, but debate is GOOD not bad.
A lot of the ideological ideas are around intent and context of the images to explore vs exploit.
So would the images be different if, say, they had a Brand name at the bottom and they were an Ad in Black and White?
What about if the images do end up on a dubious website.
What about the fact the images are for sale at $25 000 each? What of the buyer?
What if the kids took the pics themselves?
What if the kids were Asian and the pics for sale on the street?
I think these are really important issues to discuss so bring it on!
“Society thinks it more important that…” blah, blah, blah.
Society is no more capable of thought than some of the individuals within it. If you are trying to say that the majority of those who make up ’society’ think a certain way, I presume that you have some evidence.
Or maybe you’re like David Spears (on ABC radio this morning) from Sky ‘News’, who has decided that ‘community sentiment’ is with Dewhine, Bolt, etc. without providing a scrap of evidence.
It’s the self-fulfilling prophesy technique - say something often enough and it comes to be believed as the truth.
Sc, I think a lot of those questions have already been addressed:
(1) It’s not just intent but also context. Different images are viewed in different ways and in different places. Normally the gallery’s website would probably only attract a very small audience, primarily those who are aware of its existence or people who got there via a google image search for Bill Henson’s photography, that is - people who are going there expecting to see “art”. As Kim pointed out, very similar images can still be found on other art gallery sites - run by government - and indeed on the Sydney Morning Herald’s site. The images have just been violently wrenched out of their intended context and inserted into a much bigger one - where the rules of discourse are different and the urge to condemn is instant. So while we might have a debate, and in fact I think we already have, what’s happening now in the “public sphere” is anything but a debate.
(2) Similarly with your other questions - context is key. Henson makes more money - probably - as one of Australia’s most famous artists (he’s had major retrospectives this decade at the Art Gallery of NSW and the NGV) than most if not all commercial photographers. So these images per se are not going to end up in Black & White or on an ad - because he’s got a proprietary as well as an artistic interest in them, he’s likely to be very careful indeed as to their dissemination. But they’ve just been placed in quite a different frame, and potentially one where people have other protocols for viewing them than the relatively small audience who would normally look at them.
(3) I don’t think the images are about “sexualisation” of children in the slightest - except in the really stoopid “nudity = sex” or
“puberty = sex” way, because the poses and the actual composition of the images point to their meaning (or one of their meanings) - the awkwardness of embodied adolescence. Incidentally, the “painterly” nature of the images Kim referred to is also a clue to their artistic nature. Note that I’m not trying to adjudicate or rule on what is or what is not art, but what I am suggesting is that the visual semiotics and the usual viewing context of these images give multiple signals that they’re to be seen within an artistic tradition.
I think it’s also very important as a condition of impossibility for a “debate” to take place that we now can’t see the images in question because of the police action. So all people have to go on, if they don’t go to the trouble to find other examples of Henson’s work, is Miranda Devine and Andrew Bolt’s assertions about what the images are like.
PaulW wrote:
See comment 60, it applies to you too.
I tend to agree Mark. If there are artists i really struggle with, its some of the Chapman brothers models of children, (pictures of which i have, included in a book i own btw, bought in an art bookshop in Brissie).
Well, I’ll put a word in for the cops here.
When it comes to child protection, they know what they’re doing. And sadly, they deal with enough of the real thing to know that this is a waste of their time.
The cops will also be laughing behind their hands at what amateurs Devine and Bolt are. If they think that this is protecting kids, well the cops really know what’s involved in child protection.
I predict they’ll go through the motions, file the paperwork, and let it through to the keeper.
I have adolescent children, Paul W and I have personal experience of child molestation. A little like Tigtog, I grew up, initially, in a family that was pretty relaxed about child nudity. I don’t think I wore clothes much at all until I went to school. The danger did not lie within our family, nor did it occur when we were scuttling around beaches and forests in the buff. The danger came from without, from people who did not have a relaxed attitude to nudity but whose superficial primness disguised a darker core.
It is a mistake to think that a child’s perceived sexuality leads to their abuse. Projecting adult sexuality onto a child’s nascent sexual feelings may play a role in excusing or denying abuse after the fact but as for the actual act itself, it is the vulnerability of children physically and emotionally that abusers prey upon. And it is this very vulnerability that Henson takes as his subject matter. That is why I believe his photographs actually stand in direct opposition to, for example, the advertisements of pouty preteens striking provocative poses; images that endow children with a sexual agency that they just would not have in their relationships with adults or much older children.
I am sorry that David Rubie had to be so abusive to Matilda because she has a point - you do have a different perspective on childhood as a parent than you do as an adult surveying your own childhood memories. It is very difficult not to project some of your adult self back into those memories.
su wrote:
Where exactly did Matilda make this point? The Matilda comment merely chose to make some deeply incorrect assumptions about the posters on the thread in order to derail the discussion.
Mercurius, I’m not blaming the police. It’s something they probably have to do and they’ll probably do it well. I’m just saying it pisses me off that the kids are put in that position, especially by people who are ostensibly concerned for their welfare.
I was also very perturbed by a quote from Iemma I read in the Oz, questioning the parents’ bona fides. Next Hetty Johnson will be swooping down on them offering counselling.
Well then you are reading her last paragraph differently to me. And although I don’t agree that these images sexualise children for reasons I have already stated she wasn’t derailing the thread she was putting an argument. And your grossly offensive reply was unnecessary.
I wonder how the children in the photos will feel about this in years to come?
su, I’ve pointed out to David that his comment to Matilda was out of order.
Kevin Rudds’ response has been disappointing but predictable.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=567968
I wonder how he feels about his nephews’ work being held back from exhibition in Melbourne? It might be worth catching Van Thanh Rudds site before it is taken down for conveying dangerous political thought.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/rudd-v-banksy–ripoff-or-real-art/2008/05/23/1211183062478.html
http://www.van-thanh-rudd.net/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
I have an adolescent child. To suggest that Hensens’ pictures were “revolting” is pretty sad; “sensitive” seems much closer to the mark. Mind you, there is still a lot of disgust about the sight of any human body, regardless of it’s stage of development and that is even sader.
su wrote:
Uncivil yes. Unnecessary, no. I found it g