Author Note: The original title of this post was “Do the right thing, Mainstream Media: disguise the faces of the minors in your reproductions of the Henson images NOW”, deliberately imperative because I wanted it to grab attention in people’s feed readers and hopefully provoke an immediate reaction. That has happened, the faces are now being pixellated in the mass media (not that I’m claiming that this is a direct result of this post), so I’m changing the title to something that sounds a bit more like “me” speaking.
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The Age has an article quoting the mother of the girl whose image is the most widely disseminated with respect to the investigation of complaints against artist Bill Henson’s nude studies of adolescents. The mother defends Henson against claims that he did anything unethical, and mentions in a statement given to The Age via an intermediary that he has been a friend of the family for over 10 years, that her daughter has “a keen interest in the arts” and that the whole family were well acquainted with Henson’s work before the photo-shoot.
The Age claims to have discovered that the pictures were taken last year, and that the girl is still 13 years of age. That contradicts earlier reports that the images were several years old, which would have made the girl perhaps now 16 or 18, i.e. possibly made her no longer a minor. If The Age is correct, then she is still very much under-age, and I’m pretty sure that that creates a problem for the media who have disseminated Henson’s images of her online and in the press, or at least it certainly should.
I only yesterday realised that the censored images of Henson’s work readily available online mostly lack one key ingredient that we usually see when images of minors are at the heart of a news cycle about alleged sexual exploitation/abuse – there has been no black bar or pixellation over the face to disguise the minor’s identity.
Why the hell not? These minors are not celebrities with no expectation of privacy from the media simply because their faces are part of an artwork, surely? If a photographer stationed outside the family home took a shot of her getting into the family car and the Age purchased it for publication, normal practise would be to pixellate or black-bar her face, wouldn’t it? So why not do the same with these images of her (and the other adolescent subjects)?
Just because websites devoted to art have not pixellated the face in the context of displaying art shouldn’t mean that the mass media gets a green light to bypass normal privacy protection for minors in the very different context of alleged sexual exploitation, does it?
Kudos to the ABC Online, BTW, who have pixellated the girl’s face for some time (not sure whether they did it from the get-go or not). I really hope that some of the websites reportedly under investigation for posting Henson pics online are investigated as much for their failure to protect this girl’s privacy as they will be for disseminating nudie pics.
If the girl in question is still 13 and people are hosting the image on their website, obscuring the face is also a good idea. Thanks for the (legal) community service announcement, tigtog!
it’s interesting that some media has been putting bars over the ‘naughty bits’ and not disguising the child’s entry – and it’s a pointer to their prurient interests in the matter as opposed to any concern for the child’s interests. hypocrisy abounds …
child’s entry ?? == child’s interests.
oh fuck, i meant identity. brain not in order this morning. it must be this rain.
Up until this morning The Age had the uncensored photo in all its radiant beauty on their website here.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/the-controversial-career-of-bill-henson/2008/05/24/1211183189567.html
Perhaps the girl and her parents had no problem with this. Their expectation surely was that this image would be in a public gallery and possibly published for anyone to view.
Indeed they did, Lloyd. That was rather my point. I’m glad that they’ve taken it down.
Their expectation was surely that the image would be displayed/published in the context of art. Giving permission for those uses of the image is not at all the same as giving permission for the images to be used elsewhere in a different context. In particular, as a minor being discussed by the mass media with respect to alleged sexual exploitation, I see not reason at all that the expectation of privacy afforded under Child Protection legislation would be negated by the fact that the images have been displayed/published elsewhere.
Are any photos, censored or otherwise, still on display on the other mass media sites? If they didn’t obtain Henson’s (or the subjects’) permission to publish the works, then there may well be injunctions flying about that are the reason that the image has been removed entirely.
good points tigtog, looks like the MSM has been caught with its Silks down; what were they thinking? The term ‘hypocrites’ is inadequate.
I found the picture a few minutes ago.
I think tigtog is right in principle, but there are conflicting principles at work. First, now that the matter has become controversial I think it is in the public interest for us to be able to see the picture, even though it is clearly designed to be displayed in full size (did I see 1.5 metres somewhere?) in an appropriate environment.
The conflicting principle is that showing the picture may cause harm, indeed harm where there may not have been any at all if this furore had not been raised. I’ve said on another thread that harm to individuals trumps the public good. So it should here.
There is another principle. That is that the work should not be shown at all in a form that the artist and the model are not happy with. I can’t imagine them being happy with any pixillated and patched version. But they may prefer us to see at least that rather than be completely unknowing.
BTW,
where’s this rain Tyro Rex? just askin’
Yes well this goes back to my earlier question: why oh why didn’t Henson digitally alter the girls face in the first place? A slight alteration to her cheekbones or nose would’ve made her unrecognizable and protected her from this brouhaha, which was in my view always a reasonably foreseeable occurrence.
I also recall the sexualization of children’s clothing debate and in particular this catalogue picture link by tigtog: http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/10/10/an-outrageous-claim/#comment-158561
Is this catalogue picture art? Does intent and context make the clothed and sexualized picture of the catalogue girl exploitative while the naked and picture Henson image isn’t?
None of this is straightforward.
What makes the pictures displayed in that catalogue sexualised, to my eyes, is the cheesecake postures – back arched to emphasise the chest, legs splayed, pouty expressions etc etc. It is the ubiquity of such sexualised representations of fully clothed little girls that is the matter of concern – the corporate nature of the commercial imperative driving the display of these images is just the explanation for the distressing ubiquity.
My defence of Henson is not that these images are art and are therefore not pr0n. I have never made that argument. His images are not pr0n because it takes more than just a naked body to constitute pr0n, and his images do not contain those necessary criteria. That has always been my argument.
Ambigulous, The rain is on the Sunshine Coast at present from Caloundra to Maryborough.
It’s coming south so wind and rain tomorrow and Sunday, breaking to showers on Monday. we’ve had 43mm so far.
Sorry tt!
Brian:
Really? How do you justify the criminal justice system then?
I think this is more the issue at hand. How to balance the rights of artists and performers against the publics right to ‘news’. I think that there’d have to be high levels of naivety involved for a model to not consider the possibility that the artwork could end up being spread around in the media and on the internet.
I disagree, Tigtog. In my view there exists no neat divide between pornography and art, either conceptually or in reality. The proof of the pudding is always in the eating; the Henson pictures now adorn porn sites and are without a doubt now a masturbatory prop and accordingly they are both art and pornography.
And let me try to put this delicately – a woman lecturing a bloke about what constitutes male pornography is about as fructuous as a bloke lecturing a woman on the experience of childbirth.
tigtog those images in the calendar lack a near universal element of adult women’s clothing adverts – the models aren’t touching themselves. Adult female models are almost always touching themselves. But in every other way most of those pictures mimic adult clothes adverts, so the children are at least semi-sexualised.
But this is the problem with the anti-pr0n wowser movement like the Devines and Bolts of the world. They’re so sure that a picture of a naked teenager is obscene, and so sure that a fully clothed women in Cosmo, touching herself and looking pouty and sexual, is okay – in fact I’m sure Blair and Bolt (and Devine, who knows?) love flicking through those mags. Their signals are all messed up and we shouldn’t listen to anything they say, because they have elevated “decency” over sense.
In honour of this brouhaha, I am visiting the V&A museum this weekend to look at some kiddy pr0n. Does this mean if Henson is convicted of making kiddy stick pictures I can never return to Australia?
I think you are all being really precious here.
The image is in the public domain, always was. Can’t see the difference to it being displayed in a gallery to it being shown in a newspaper.
It’s porn or it’s not porn.
There is a legal standard as to what constitutes pornographic images, and that was the standard I was using. If I was carrying on about what you personally should find arousing then you might have a point.
As to your idea that as soon as something is up on a porn website, or someone uses it as their masturbation fetish, it therefore becomes porn, that’s a textbook category confusion error. Jokes about shoe porn and food porn and bling porn applied to glossy catalogues and magazines catering to fat-walleted suburbanites may well have debased the word’s meaning somewhat, but it certainly has not changed the legal standard, which is the standard by which Henson’s work will ultimately be judged.
Why should he? This is portraiture. To obscure the face of the model, to alter it is to render it not portraiture. In fact this would tend to support the view that there’s something shameful in what she’s doing. I contend that this is only the case if one subscribes to Abrahamic sexual codes more or less strictly: the body must be covered. There is more to these than simply sexual shame (decorum, modesty etc) to be sure but its advocates do not have a monopoly on public space.
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To change the face would make it pornographic because it’s then pretty much about looking at her chest then. Clue to the philistines: Henson’s work is primarily about faces.
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In my view The Age have an obligation to obscure the face only if the models and/or her parents want it. They do not. They understand art y’see. They know that one can appreciate beauty as just that – solely! without the need for a cold shower. If Mr Bolt et al reach for the whip of flagellation in an effort to expunge these thoughts, these thoughts! That’s not our fault and it’s not our problem.
Given that Henson’s been doing this stuff for decades I question whether the brouhaha was forseeable. Ask me and I smell the blood of the religious Right.
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These people are un-Australian.
Yup, Steve Munn is blathering on about something called “male porn” can only mean something that a man uses to whack off to, is right? (Every other reading I can think of makes even less sense. Women use porn too, or so I seem to have heard or read somewhere, and sometimes both men and women look at the same porn together, believe it or not.) So if ‘porn’ is anything a man treats as porn, then porn is the name for the high school essay I wrote in 1989 which was printed in the local paper and attracted the attention of this worm http://www.mako.org.au/tempjewell.html
Adrien, I perceive that your literacy on these matters is probably superior to mine, but are you sure that it’s portraiture? I would think that the purpose of portraiture was to capture the essence of the subject, whereas to me Henson is using the subject as a model to explore something about the human condition.
So he is using the particular to explore universals, at least in the circumstances of our times and perhaps beyond.
Submitted for your consideration!
Laura, I had been intending to make the point that porn is not necessarily bad in all circumstances, and may indeed in certain circumstances have positive uses.
But it’s not an subject I know a lot about.
Needlessly hostile comment there Laura. Sorry about your unfortunate personal experience but heh don’t drag me into it.
yes it’s a portrait, Adrien is right, and I was pointing out the ridiculousness of Munn’s definition of what counts as pornography.
Desipis, I really don’t know what you are talking about. A criminal justice system should be able to cope with both principles.
An example that comes to mind, which they were talking about on the radio just now, is the previous government’s attitude to refugees. They clearly thought it was OK to give asylum seekers a really bad time, to the point where permanent damage was almost routine, to deter others from coming anywhere near us.
I can’t quote you the instance in detail, but I distinctly remember a certain minister giving this instrumental justification.
If that wasn’t done for some idea of the public good then why? Racist sadism perhaps?
A charter of human rights in the constitution might be one way of securing rights against the possibility that a government might make laws that serve the interests of the majority but harm people. The High Court could then throw such laws out.
Laura, with respect, that’s an assertion rather than an argument, so if you don’t mind I’ll remain of the same opinion still.
I agree with Adrian @18 about defacing portrature.
While there is clearly a legal issue regarding identifying a minor involved in court action, this has nothing to do with the nature of the pictures.
Black lines and pixilation are central icons of taboo and themselves pornographise the photos. Black lines and pixilation are the central image in phone sex ads which clearly trade in taboo, not nakedness.
The MSM that has censored the images are engaging in smutty sensationalism and they know it.
I am glad that some in the MSM have chosen to resist Nazism and print the pictures unpornographied.
I know it’s an assertion Brian, you didn’t say you wanted an argument. A portrait is a picture of an individual person, a likeness.
To make it clear, I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest that Henson should have altered the face. I don’t know what processes he may have used after taking the picture, but I’d be surprised if there weren’t any. In the TV program the other night I’m sure he was shown altering or touching up an image by hand.
He’s obviously very particular about achieving the effect he wants and I’d suggest that if he wanted to alter the features he would.
As to his purpose, I go back to what Kim said in the first post about his interest in exploring a time of transition from childhood to adolescence. His interest seems to be in the nature of that process of human development rather than capturing the portrait of a particular person.
That’s why I don’t think it’s portraiture although superficially it may seem so. I think his purpose governs his technique. If a critic wants to include it within a genre they call “portraiture” that’s fine, but at present it doesn’t do anything for my understanding.
Cross-posted, Laura. I was wanting to go beyond a simple dictionary definition.
My point tigtog is that it’s not porn, never was, never will be. It is an extraordinarily beautiful image whether it’s confined in an art gallery or posted on a Fairfax website. I’m not disagreeing with you, I just think the debate on our side is being far too respectful.
If I was the model or the mother I would want the image out there in shop windows,in their face. I would want Miranda Devine confronted with it every time she hopped on a bus or turned on the TV.
“and I was pointing out the ridiculousness of Munn’s definition of what counts as pornography.”
Not one for common courtesy or tact, are you Laura.
My point remains, a definition of pornography that excludes how a material is subjectively experienced is in my view an odd one. The reluctance to accept that an object of art can also be pornographic is, I believe, the stigma associated with pornography. But as Brian has said, pornography isn’t intrinsically bad. Or that’s my view anyway.
That’s always been my point about these particular images as well. That has nothing to do with the legal issues surrounding reproducing and disseminating the face of a minor who is the subject of a Child Protection investigation, a practice which the mass media have long refrained from and which I’m almost certain is a requirement of the Child Protection legislation.
I do however have some sympathy with your idea of using the image to shame Miranda Devine, were such a thing possible.
I hope portrature isn’t too far off topic, but here’s my 10 cents worth.
I reckon a great portrait is not one that necessarily bears an acurate likeness (allthough photography is a medium biased towards accuracy). A good portrait does 2 things. 1/ tell a big story beyond/behind the image (look behind the image,literally, in the Mona Lisa) and 2/ Create an identification by the viewer either “of” or “with” the story. Hansens photos tell a big story about the human condition represented in the photos, in particular the facial expressions. This story is one that every human can identify or identify with.
I make a distinction between “identify” and “identify with” – e.g., As an old man, I do not identify with the photos of young women, but I can clearly identify the big story. I have not yet seen Hansens photos of young men but I suspect I may identify “with” those photos reflecting my own youth (all those kilograms ago).
Hensens photos clearly tell a big story that their viewers can relate to, which not only transcend the story-less objectification inherent in pornography, but also classic nude art genres that largely rely on one dimensional (and patriarchal!) notions of physical beauty.
Brian I don’t know why you are unhappy with the normal everyday definition of the pictures in question as portraits. KIm was speculating about Henson’s motives in her post up there.
Steve Munn, I am polite to people who are polite to me; for some reason you thought it appropriate to comment with a ‘heh’ on my own experience of where your end-use definition of what counts as pornography can lead.
We’re on the same page on this one, I think but I’d rephrase it:
“Pornography isn’t always intrinsically bad.”
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t and I’m in no position to estimate proportions.
“Steve Munn, I am polite to people who are polite to me; for some reason you thought it appropriate to comment with a ‘heh’ on my own experience of where your end-use definition of what counts as pornography can lead.”
Nobody’s definition of pornography caused that event as you well know. It is downright creepy and disturbing that you should launch such an attack on someone you don’t know who hasn’t the faintest connection with the event you describe.
Nonetheless I’m very sorry about your bad experience. Hell now I’m depressed and will comment no further on this matter.
Laura, to pick up John’s point I think Henson is trying to tell a big story about the human condition, but I think he is not trying to capture the essence of the person who is the model/subject. I could be wrong.
I thought the simple dictionary meaning obscured this. That’s all.
But they are still a beautiful pictures and a likeness, in so far as the person is visible.
I was talking about the corpus, rather than the individual picture and that might be some of the confusion. But even in that case I don’t think the purpose is to capture the essence of the subject.
I would like to nominate this post for best LP title EVAH, and link to this interesting exercise in portraiture.
She can be shamed or close to it. I sent her a pretty strong email just this side of abusive when the SMH sent her to Baghdad to interview Petraeus and she responded personally in a particularly hurt fashion. I felt briefly bad but now realise how pathetic that was of me.
A second reading of yesterday’s effort brings me to the boil.
Andrew Frost says it better than me.
‘Devine has a long and illustrious career of misrepresenting arguments and issues for her own purposes. As a member of the conservative commentariat the Henson affair has given pundits like Devine the opportunity to play a double whammy – a victim of minority liberal hysteria and a defender of real moral values
Devine accuses the art community of disingenuousness, yet her own complicity in kicking off this controversy goes unaddressed. It’s a breathtaking piece of hypocrisy to claim that you had nothing to do with the issue when you were the one leading with mock outrage over Henson in your column, only to find it picked up by talk back radio and tabloid television. Shocked as anyone to see the police move in? Come on, Miranda, you were clapping your little hands with glee’
http://artlife.blogspot.com/2008/05/seven-days-in-may.html
I loathe this woman. She has stripped our shiny kev of his gleam and taken us back to a world we surely deserve to have left behind.
I suspect no artist, especially a photographer believes they are “capturing the essence” of a live model. On the one hand, if there is to be an “essence” conveyed it is more likely to be that of the artist than the model. However, especially in facial expressions, especially in photography, the model speaks for themselves on their own terms which is more likely to be a theatrical presentation or perhaps a natural glimpse at one particular emotion expressed momentarily through body language and face, accentuated by lighting, props and framing. This is not a persons essense, but it is high art.
I confess to being cold-bloodedly Web 2.0 about the way it’s phrased, search engines the better for the ranking of.
zoe,
I think that the portraiture you linked to captures the essences of those guys, but wait until they reach puberty: they will acquire sexual connotations and become the butt of coarse humour….
John, I found all that a bit confusing to be honest. But maybe I’m a bit thick. Just to take up this bit:
I think this exemplifies what’s different about Henson’s art. He emphasised that in a shoot he is very precise in the instructions he gives to the model and how they have to concentrate really hard to do what he is asking. Kim from personal experience told how long and gruelling these sessions can be. I’m sure he takes heaps of shots to get what he wants. Then he does a lot with backgrounding, lighting, props, framing etc and I suspect uses filters and alters colours and contrasts. We don’t even know, in fact, whether he alters the facial features as Steve suggested he should. We don’t know what the models actually look like. Sometimes there is hardly anything of them to be seen at all.
So with respect, I think you are on the wrong track. Remember on the TV program it was emphasised over and over that he wasn’t so much a photographer as an artist who uses photography. I think it’s particularly mistaken to say “the model speaks for themselves on their own terms”. As far as I can see with Henson that’s way off the mark.
While admitting that I could be wrong.
Good post on this matter, Tigtog.
Brian, I was wondering, have you seen any of Henson’s pictures? I am asking this in the mildest manner imaginable.
Hi Brian,
I didn’t see the T.V. show so forgive me if my ignorance has led me up the wrong path.
In the henson photos that I have seen, like most portrature, the face is a central element, if not the central element. The facial expression interprets the rest of the image. In the case of photography the face, expressions and personality, even if staged, are not constructions of the artists but elements that the artist uses to make their broader construction. The face and personality, while manipulated and contextualised by the artist, is a manifestation of the model, it belongs to the model (if not in a legal sense). This is what I meant by the model speaking for themselves on their own terms. You may have noticed I was refering specifically to the face in that comment.
I do not disagree with what I think you are saying about the work being an expression of Henson, not the models. However I dont understand how some other notion of portrature that you have, that does not embrace Henson, may in some way be different, hence my comment about capturing essense.. It seems Henson has seen something in either the personality or facial features or life exerience of his models and used that something in his constructions.
This is why I disagree with pixilation and black bars because it dehumanises and extinguishes the personality of the model, leaving a hollow shell of an image that could well be described as pornography in its new visual imagery.
I hope Henson has not technically manipulated facial expressions beyond lighting and texture, I would think lesser of him if he did. But even so, as with painting where the nuance of facial expression is totally a construction of the artist’s mind, the face is still a/the central element and any attempt to disfigure or disguise it is constructing a completely new image and new story, not modifying the existing one.
Any face in any picture has a life of its own as well as its place in the whole. even those dumb smiley face thingies, as well as the portraits presented by Zoe @ 38.
There is no argument I am trying to win Brian, I think it is portrature and you dont. Such difference of opinion about everthing is what defines the phenomenon of art, from petty disagreement such as this, to questions of minors and sexuality through to basic questions of what is art? Its just fun to have an opinion on it.
But you are still wrong, it is portrature and the models own identity are central to the images.
I appreciate that this business of portraiture is not really the topic of this post, but I’ll say this and leave it.
Do you think this image is being used to portray the young girl and through that portrayal some larger story? Or do you think the larger story is the prime focus and the image of the girl is being used to tell it? This one?
I found this critique by Dennis Cooper interesting, especially the paragraph at the top of page 2. Yes to Henson’s “more forceful, less attenuated pursuit of emotional truth”, but it’s noteworthy, I think, that Cooper has quite a different view of the girls used as subjects and their circumstances than we are getting from the snippets of information coming through. I doubt that the result across the opus shows the girls with any kind of control or involves them acting on their own accord to contribute to the outcome. It doesn’t mean that Henson is simply using his models/subjects and doesn’t respect them. He does respect them, absolutely.
I cannot add to the intelligence of all this! I have read Lewis Carroll,and a biography.
John, I didn’t refresh my screen before my last comment so I didn’t see yours at 46. I’m not trying to win an argument either and I agree with most of what you say except the last sentence, of course.
Quite so, but I believe he is instrumentally using the models to tell the larger story rather than examining the essence of each model, which I take to be the purpose of portraiture, with the larger story then emerging from that examination.
I agree, and in all honesty I don’t think he has. there is an authenticity about the faces that I think could not be preserved if he altered them digitally.
Just as well that “a” is there. In that case it’s mostly true, even if only half or less is shown. There is one I’ve seen (don’t have the link, unfortunately), which is mostly a full frontal of the torso of a somewhat more sexually developed girl than the one at the centre of the stir, but still a girl. In that case her head is turned to one side as far as it can go so that the profile is lost in the shadows and the dark background. Her nose is represented by a little splash of light and a very faint outline but it’s actually detached from the face. You can’t see any eyes at all. What you see is one cheek and jawline, the ear partly visible.
I can’t quite go there. In each case the model’s identity is there, with truth, respect and authenticity, but I think the treatment is aimed at highlighting and extracting (almost) an aspect of that identity to tell a larger story that is common to all the images I’ve seen. He’s not trying to bring out the uniqueness and personhood of that particular human being. It’s there, but it’s secondary.
Can I put it this way. I think he consistently is highlighting fragility rather than strength, for example, a strength I suspect his models in fact have.
That’s the point I’m trying to make. Whether you still call it portraiture is secondary.
I can’t imagine I’ve got anything left to say on this one.
Brian, the Dennis Cooper article also refers to the pictures as portrature, in case you missed that bit. (I refuse to do that smiley face thing)
To return to the topic a bit,
The contraversial images of contracted models are in no way comparable to…. “If a photographer stationed outside the family home took a shot of her getting into the family car and the Age purchased it for publication” as tigtog claims in the post. And while on that point tigtog also says.. “These minors are not celebrities with no expectation of privacy from the media simply because their faces are part of an artwork, surely?” Surely, a model contracting and posing for one of the most famous photogrephers on the planet for inclusion in an exhibition could well have had some expectations of media attention and the images appearing on the net and my guess is these issues would have been thrashed out by the models and their families and friends and if henson is as professional as they say he is, especially with him. What was unforseen, uninvited and unwelcome was the police investigation into the lives of the models and their families and the consequent criminalisation of the images.
I am surprised that Tigtog has written such an emotive piece (and title) apportioning shame on the images, especially in the light of what I consider to be the rare bravery of the media outlets who published them, ensuring that the gallery would not be an isolated target of the Nazis.
The only restriction on identifying the models is a direct result of the Nazi legal action and criminalisation of the images and has nothing to do with the rights and interests of the models.
I know, let’s make a new law so that every parent has to clothe their children in T-shirts declaring: BEWARE Contains naked child. This is 21st Century witch-burning.
Ozymandias, I like that idea!
John, Cooper says:
It’s a superficial comparison. He obviously hasn’t considered the issue of genre in any depth.
BTW, in the face of your persistent use of a different spelling I looked it up. It’s portaiture, not portrature
There, I’ve used that smiley thing for the first time evah. But I agree, I don’t much like it!
On your comment on tigtog’s post, she is saying that it is a firm rule, if not the law, that the faces of children are hidden in child abuse cases. If the coppers have done what they’ve done, then it brings it into that context.
They are making a freedom of expression statement probably, and are obviously supporting Henson and the gallery, effectively daring the cops to sue them also.
I agree with tigtog. First, an exception should not be made here, out of respect for the child. Secondly, if they wanted to publish they should have gained permission. Even if this eventuality was discussed prior to the shoot, which I doubt given their own norms and several decades of trouble-free practice, you can’t predict the particular circumstances and how you are going to feel.
I’ve already alluded to this, but I’ll go into more detail: this post’s title was deliberately constructed with a regard to Search Engine Optimisation and post ranking on searches. I agree that it doesn’t sound like ‘me’. I constructed the title like that because this is a legal issue regarding Child Protection and the privacy rights of a minor with respect to the mass media, it was one that has been consistently overlooked, I wanted people to know what the post was about just from reading the title and I hoped to command attention by the title. That appears to have worked.
I’ve already stated my opinions that the seized artworks by Henson are not pornographic. I have no interest in “apportioning shame on the images”, I am solely concerned with the protection of the privacy rights of the minor involved with respect to mass media. Your continued emphasis on how censored/pixellated reproductions in the mass media are a capitulation to the wowsers are not without merit, but the media privacy rights of the minor who is the object of the Child Protection investigation trump that unreservedly in my opinion.
As to what a “contracted model” should have expected, what exactly do you mean by “contracted model”, anyway? Artist’s models have never had contracts specifying up-front fees and residual arrangements in the way that commercial models do when posing for work designed to be seen in the mass media. The only contractual arrangement for artist’s models is generally a release form if the medium is photography, and in this case the parents’ consent as well. Other mediums don’t even have that. Sure, people who do life modelling for artist classes are generally paid a fee for their time, but there is no award covering artist’s models because the dissemination of the images/works is entirely different from the way in which the mass media publishes images of fashion models.
It’s an example of what I was saying up the thread about individuals not being harmed in action intended for the greater good.
The shorter version is “Do no harm!” Especially as a means to doing good, or as collateral. Not always possible, but we should try to make it so.
On contracts, all we did in making films etc in the Education Dept was to get the talent to show up by verbal arrangement, have them fill in a claim form to be paid the standard rates and then sign a release form (one page, not much on it) so that we could use the results.
That’s as I recall it, but I wasn’t involved in the practicalities.
The original title of this post has now served its purpose in raising awareness of this overlooked legal issue. I am about to change it to something that people will perhaps agree sounds more “like me”.
If anyone should wish to continue the discussion about portraiture I’ve put a link on the general thread so please go there.
Better late than never, I suppose.
It was rather interesting, Brian. Perhaps this wasn’t the best thread for it, but I think it actually added a certain je ne sais quois.
tigtog, I thought it needed some new input if it was going to go any further. I think there are some who were reading the other thread who weren’t reading this one. But it may be played out also.
There not mutually exclusive. If the primary picture is a portrait of a human or humans it’s portraiture. The best explores the human condition thru the essence of the subject. I guess you could argu that Henson’s subjects are ‘typical’ not ‘idiosyncratic’. I’d only have an opinion about specific works in that regard.