compromised images?

‘But this isn’t about me or you, its about the girl in question and their parents, and what they feel about it.’

So anything is OK, as long as ‘the girl in question’, and her parents, agrees? I think not.
You could always find someone who will ‘agree’ with anything. This does not make it acceptable for society to condone it.

Call me cynical, but in my view ‘artists’ often produce edgy or outrageous works and use the ensuing conservative outrage to promote themselves. They will always find defenders amongst those who would like to be seen as ‘progressive’.

.

I’m sure we all remeber ‘Piss Christ’, or the film ‘9 Songs’. We all remember them for their controversy, not for any artistic merit the works may have contained.

.

first scenario, imhotep, is a no, it isn’t all right to torture anyone. someone submitting to masochistic practices as their wont (such as for NYC photographer richard kern, and a huge no. of others, is a different matter. but no, art doesn’t condone anything simply because it is claimed to be art. see, not everything is as it seems, especially in art – that’s one of its great capacities – to get us to see things in some way, from some perspective, usually one we’ve not necessarily considered previously.

the second question, if i had a fourteen year old daughter and you were bill henson [or some relevant equivalent – ie respectable artist with appropriate intent, etc], and my daughter agreed after a full and frank discussion, would be yes.

and we have to remember in this debate that the subject at question was not displayed as fully naked – no genitalia could be discerned. a pre-pubescent chest is not genitalia. or else all those shots of bubs in the bath will land you 20 in pentridge. who’d be left outside to prosecute??

1. Is the torture being acted? Then definately yes. If not, then artists do have to abide by the law of the land, if the artist commits a serious crime in creating their art, then, well there is plenty of evidence for the police isn’t there?

2. I dont know, probably not. But this isn’t about me or you, its about the girl in question and their parents, and what they feel about it.

Two questions.

(1) Assume I am an artist. I produce pictures of women being tortured, to highlight women’s opression/objectivication/some other plausible theme. I do this with their consent.
Would this be OK? Is anything OK as long as it’s ‘art’?

(2) Would YOU let naked photos of your 14 year old daughter be displayed in public?

(I answer no to both. Guess I must be a rightwing redneck do-gooder)

.

Although the question of where art (like this in question) ends and child porn starts is an interesting one…

DMD: I don’t mean to frighten you, but Kerrie Anne agrees with you, as does channel nine news etc…

Im anti bad taste, but im even more anti censorship. The price we pay for freedom (which we do have to a decent extent) is bad art, people bleating about their right to discriminate without being discrimanted against, disco rock etc. Its worth this price, because it means the next time the christian right or any other bastards who try to claim they have copyright on whats normal, good and moral tries to tell us that our music/literature is of the devil and should be banned, we can tell them exactly where to go, safe in the knowledge our society will agree. Cencorship is bad for society, even when(/if, I havn’t seen the pictures) the material in question is repugnant.

I am guilty of taking many photos of naked children. I’ve even emailed them around to my friends. No one would accuse me of child pornography.

Exactly. Tony Abbot said that he’s concerned about a double standard; that it’s art on the wall of the gallery but those photos would be porn if on his computer. So what does that make the numerous nude photos of a co-worker’s daughter on his wall at work?

do-gooders of the world too

blah blah blah

It’s funny how artwork like Henson’s can be around for decades before someone goes “OMG! that’s a child, it’s pornographic and paedophilia!” The do-gooders of the work shiit me. While agreed that there is a line between art and paedophilia, there line isn’t exactly that thin or fuzzy as all the whingers and those jumping on the band wagon claim. I have no doubt that these pictures are art and nothing more, you see the artistic side in the pictures. I agree that children who appear in such works should do with parent’s consent and supervision, but the apparent lack of complaints and the numerous other subjects who have basically told everyong to fck off and stop being rediculous really says it all.

But i’m sure all naked baby pictures parents take and art works containing naked babies will soon be banned and the photographer/artist shall be burnt at the stake.

People usually don’t change their underwear in public, bathe in public or go to the toilet in public

Children do.

I am guilty of taking many photos of naked children. I’ve even emailed them around to my friends. No one would accuse me of child pornography.

In today’s society, going minus clothes is usually quite a personal thing.

yes, so why do you impose your personality on others who choose to do things differently? i for instance am quite comfortable with my own nudity and while i don’t impose it on others by parading willy nilly (as it were) have no problem in communal bathing/changing facilities, public beaches where such practices are tolerated, etc.

humans have been naked for a lot longer than they haven’t. i think you are conflating the acceptance of US mores and prudishness as common in australia with the greater human acceptance of the body. head off to warm climates, to liberal communities such as scandanavia or even much of europe. this debate is absurd and is showing us as becoming a 52nd state of america more than almost anything else…

the other aspect, of course is, while we ant to draw a firm line when someone is capable/incapable of giving genuine consent, how can we be sure of such a decision? why is it not possible (not that i’m arguing it is the case here, mind) that the subject in a henson image, at an age of say 15 or so, is not capable of genuinely assenting to something? and really, what was consent being given for? simply taking off clothes? heavens!

The question, astrojax, is whether the parent’s consent should be enough in this case. For some things, yes, a parents consent should be enough. But in cases where the result could be potentially psychologically damaging, then perhaps it should be only up to a consenting, of age individual.

In today’s society, going minus clothes is usually quite a personal thing. People usually don’t change their underwear in public, bathe in public or go to the toilet in public (bar civic on a Friday night, but that’s alcohol for ya). That’s just the way humans are and the way we have been for a long time.

Anne Geddes must be banned immediately and all her works BURNED. no, anne geddes should be burned and her works banned… 😉

taco, why is this context inappropriate? it was a greatly talented and respected artist whose work is rightly lauded across the globe exploring the theme of the nascent adulthood in children, the brief moment when there exists a delicate balance between childhood and adulthood and the images (from what i make of them and from hensons i have seen before) are in no way sexually suggestive or representative of sexuality, rather they address the drama of life’s natural progression and out growth and transition from one facet of life to another. the work was constructed with the consent of the parents and seemingly the good graces of the subject (who must adore the fearless leader krudd for his sensitive comments) and intended for gallery showing. how does this context make it ‘inappropriate’?

and nic ut’s shot did not have ‘artistic merit’ as its core function, rather an extremely powerful communication of atrocity – artistic merit doesn’t come into it in this discussion, but nudity does. nudity does not = sex. of course it can – and yes, often is – sexual, but the two are actually entirely separate entities and we should refrain from conflating them just because sometimes they are associated. dmd is a wally and doesn’t need defending here.

funny, the debate in the media about this has trumpeted ‘protecting children’; but has singularly failed to articulate ‘from what’… especially the actual child in this actual photo…

I am not saying that the photo is pornographic, nor is DMD, merely that the nudity is inappropriate in the context given.

If Nic Ut had made the 9 year old in that photo take their clothes off so that the picture would have more artistic merit, then that too would be inappropriate.

Why wouldn’t they be Taco. The law forbids the portrayal of children in a sexual context. A nude child is not a sexual thing – its why normal society expresses revulsion at those who would see it as such.

On 8 June 1972 photographer Nic Ut took a photo of then nine-year-old Kim Phuc as she was running naked down along a road after a South Vietnamese aircraft accidentally dropped its napalm payload on the village of Trang Bang.

Are you and DMD and the rest of the tin-foil hat brigade going to argue that this was kiddie porn? Not likely.

Some bloke is having his 21st birthday. Proud dad, or perhaps one of the blokes friends, desides to do the good natured ribbing by embarrassing him with naked baby photos.

Is it at that point that the brownshirts bust up the party?

I don’t find the photos particularly interesting or appealing, but they’re definitely in the Art category. The horror of child pornography lies in children being coerced or compelled to do sexual acts, or being exploited against their will. Putting a picture of a 14 year old girl in an art gallery, where no genitalia is visible, is not pornographic. The photo isn’t that interesting, but it’s certainly modest and in no way suggestive.

Ingeegoodbee – who is idiot in this thread?
Deadmandrinking because he dares to consider that pictures of naked kids is in-appriopriate for public display or you who seems to be of the opinion that “it’s some famous artist so anything he does must be ok”

If the exact same pictures were taken by someone who isn’t apparently some famous artist, would it still be OK?

Its just another example of where this police state country is headed. Just recently we have had massive police raid on journalists in Perth. We have had laws in parliament banning and setting jail terms for leaking public servant documents. We have had parliament controlling and bullying the press. We have upcoming blanket internet censorship laws. And now we have Police raiding art galleries around the country. And this is on top of many other insidious laws past in the last few years especially since 2001.

I also question the argument that such images need to be censored because child abuse is a problem.

Much like being homosexual, or having a fetish for shoes, being sexually attracted to children isn’t necessarily something brought on by outside factors. If we remove all images of children (sexual or otherwise) from our society will that prevent paedophilia? I doubt it.

People who abuse children are the problem, and banning images is not the solution.

Leaving aside the question of whether the images are even sexual, are people really saying that displaying these images in an art gallery is somehow going to lead to more children being abused? or is it really that the idea of child abuse is so distasteful that any image that remotely touches on the subject is obscene?

Is it the case that what these images are actually doing is causing people to have a good hard think about sexuality as it applies to adolescents, and how they are portrayed as such in our society? and if so, isn’t that the point?

@DMD: You walked straight into the minefield, lose three points for eating the bait.

If someone chooses to get their rocks off to the pictures of mums & bubs in New Idea, then they have a problem, not the photographer.

If one of the ladies in People (Australian, not the American one) wants to claim they were abused and their rights violated because truckies, dirty men, and excited boys are keeping themselves happy at night, they are seriously in the wrong industry.
They know what they’re going to be used for, and are paid a ‘dirty old man, truckie, & teenage boy masturbation premium’ for their assistance in producing the pictures.

This girl’s parents knew what she was doing, the girl knew she was doing it for arts sake, and the photographer wasn’t marketing the work to paedophiles, just the general art community.
If he’s producing art for rockspiders instead, surely they’re going to hang not just him out to dry, but the gallery owner, her parents, everyone owning a Henson, or spoken to him about his work, as surely he would have spoken about his work prior to this.

The ‘is it acceptable to the community’ check is the unqualified statement that gets used by police and the OFLC as an excuse to impose on the public their own demands.
Artists tend to use “is it acceptable to the target community” or “Will it offend my community”.

“The community” is a generic abstraction invoked by people claiming something beyond their own authority, like “the silent majority”.

Yes, Maelinar, that’s very good.

Ingee, that’s a little different. If someone kept a collection of catalogues, that’d be a bit hard to spot as porn. If someone kept a collection of nude photographs of children, including the above-mentioned photo, well, you’d spot that a mile away.

>>>————–> boom ! Firing missiles left right and centre !

pow pow pow, all guns fire !

flap flap flap.

Rubbish. How about shoe fetishists? Pitty all those victims who unwittingly appeared in sales catalogs for shoes. While your at it go cry a river for all those victims of pedderists who are aroused by full clothed children whose parents walk them all the way to the school gate.

No, you’re an idiot if you cannot understand the potential harm to someone if their image was used for pornographic purposes.

Then you’re an idiot.

Yes, that is exactly my point.

Whats your point? Are you suggesting that the subject of the pictures is somehow becomes a victim because a kiddy fiddler uses the image to get off?

Ingee, I have said that nudity does not necessarily equal sexuality, but the potential that it could be perceived as such does bring up problems in regards to children. Mr Shab had a good point when he mentioned whether the child was competent enough to make such a decision. It’s not one her parents can make for her. How would the child feel if, for example, the particular photo turned up in a collection of child porn during a police raid?

Pictures of nudes have been around for ages. The Greeks and Romans produced nude statues. There’s plenty of it around still (having just seen a newspaper copy of a Lucien Freud of a woman of advanced years and ample girth).

I think there’s a couple of ways of looking at this. If the same pictures appeared in a magazine or on a website aimed at the peaedophile market, would there be a reaction? In other words, is the arts community (such as it is) getting into a knot because of context. An upmarket gallery is ok, but a pornmag is not. That worries me because the image would be the same, but (a) it could be viewed and distributed by art lovers, but not by paedophiles (assuming the classes are mutually exclusive) and (b)it makes a regrettable assumption about who can legitimately appreciate art.

How would a community react if, say, as a protest against kiddieporn, an artist published images garnered from publications and collections used by the paedophile market. There’s a good point to be made, but does making it descend to the level criticised? Are we equally critical of advertising and drama that includes sexualised portrayals of children?

At this time, I have made a choice not to hunt down the images if they’re still around on the web. So I don’t know if they would have the tendency to deprave/corrupt etc that is normally associated with pornography. I hope they can be judged as images in their own right rather than in the context of being images that might be viewed only by the select class who happen to visit galleries.

I’ll type slowly so you can understand DMD. It’s jumped up lttle tools like you who raise the spectre of somthing untoward in an image of a naked child – whether you get a hard on or not. Since when did a naked child become an object of sexual gratification, and even if it did, for some sick bastard, how the hell does that make the image the problem? The innescapable logical extension of this is that children bathing in the nude are sexualised, that life drawing classes are promoting pornography, that National Geographic is a smutty publication … in your rush to defend the undefensible you’ve still not explaied how nudity becomes sexuality – which is central to whether or not an offence has occured – given that it is illegal to depict childen in a “sexual context”.

My question of the whole affair is not the nature of the pictures, so much as the question of consent.

Is the child in question competent to consent to these pictures being taken? The law says no. I question whether the childs parent or guardian should be allowed to consent to this, when said parent or guardian might be pushing their own ideological wheelbarrow that blinds them to the wellbeing of the child.

Don’t try to tell me that this would logically block you from taking pictures of your newborn in the bath, because it’s in a totally different context (i.e. said snaps of new bub aren’t put on public display.)

Ingee, you have brought out perhaps the most moronic argument your side of the debate can come up with – ‘if you think nude pictures of children are unacceptable, you are a pedophile’.

I was questioning the point of showing a photo of a nude child. You are a blind fool if you cannot see the impact such images could have on today’s society. Child abuse is a very serious issue, as well as child pornography and other media and actions associated with that. The artist should have taken this into account and questioned whether it was really essential to show something that clearly could have been perceived as sexual to the wrong mind.

I don’t find the images sexual myself, but I am willing to make the concession not to see those images in the interests of protecting our children and society from cultures of child abuse. Sorry, but that’s the society we live in today, Ingee.

DMD, if you cant separate nudity from sexuality when it comes to children then you’re not only an idiot, but a fuked up sick little monkey.

if you don’t see the point – then don’t go see the exhibition (not that you can anyway).

I’m not looking at it sexually. I don’t see the point.

I think if you are looking at sexually then the problem maybe with you…

So…the only way to express the vulnerability of life was to show a picture of a fourteen year olds breasts?

Some tourists in Thailand want your number!

So they had a picture of a nude child to show ‘the vulnerability of life’? Was there another way to express this that didn’t involve a nude child?

Only an idiot would get off trying on an arument like that. QED

i think it is ridiculous that this guys art has been banned. PC gone wrong – nothing sexual about the images what so ever.

Back that up, Ingee.

DMD, you’re an idiot.

So they had a picture of a nude child to show ‘the vulnerability of life’? Was there another way to express this that didn’t involve a nude child?

Deadmandrinking said :

What I really want to know is, what point was the artist was trying to make? If there was no point, then it’s pretty much just a picture of a naked child. Nobody really needs that , unless it’s for the wrong reasons.

Um, the point he was trying to make has been extensively discussed in the media. Possibly not the Daily Telegraph, but the SMH and ABC certainly have. The ABC have also at every oppotunity shown the footage they have from around 2002 of the artist himself discussing his work. So fairly easy for you to find that one out for yourself.

amarooresident said :

They should ban Anne Geddes. No reason, they just should.

What he/she said! Anne Geddes must be banned immediately and all her works BURNED.

They should ban Anne Geddes. No reason, they just should.

There is a point, however, skid, where ‘art’ might not be considered acceptable to the community. I’m sounding more and more right-wing as I say this, but when it comes to children, there really needs to be limits about how they are shown.

What I really want to know is, what point was the artist was trying to make? If there was no point, then it’s pretty much just a picture of a naked child. Nobody really needs that , unless it’s for the wrong reasons.

Raids on galleries and populist responses from our pollies don’t help the situation at all, but I’d be very surprised if Henson is actually ever convicted of anything.

I think the best thing at this stage is for everyone to calm the f*ck down and let our legal system do its work. *If* it turns out that Henson’s work is adjudged to be pornographic/paedophilic, then by all means start busting down the doors to wipe the filth from our society. On the other hand, if a properly constituted court decides that he hasn’t actually broken any laws, then the moral brigrade can get off their damn horse and go find some other target to sink their self-righteous claws into.

Maybe some of Sepi’s suggestions might be a more worthy scapegoat.

If Lenny the Labourer sees a naked human, he’s witnessed just a naked human form.
It may or may not be art if it represents something, or makes him feel something.

If he then describes the image to his peers and gets aroused, its possibly erotic, possibly pornographic.
If his friends get aroused, its probably pornographic.
If he describes it to his friends and they disown him, its obscene.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, not the authorities.

Are we suddenly going to blanket-ban all representations of humans after the cute toddler stage and before the age of consent?

This is a very difficult issue to deal with. Whilst you are pretty much correct, Ingee, we unfortunately live in an era where the evils that are committed upon children are fully in the spotlight. Whilst in the ‘good old days’ before I was born this stuff might not have even raised a brow, we have no idea how rampant undetected child abuse was then.

The question is whether a photograph of a young girls barely-developed parts is necessary to express whatever the artist was trying to express. The mostly-blurred one I saw on the news looked a little like it was focusing a lot of attention on that and I don’t know if that couldn’t have been approached in a different manner. There are people out there who would use this image for the wrong reasons.

The raids themselves were definitley heavy-handed and unnecessary, however.

They’ll be confiscating illustrated pediatrics references next (if such a thing exists, of course).

Oh, and someone contact National Geographic, I’m sure they’ve got thousands of images worth investigating.

I think art is entitled to confront the viewer – it’s one of it’s roles. What disturbs me is the link that is being drawn between nudity and this concept of a “sexual context”.

Does that make renaissance painters who included cherubs in their paintings kiddy porn merchants? The Catholic church is infamous for its ongoing problems with kiddy fiddlers – maybe its all those depictions of a nude baby Jesus!

Honestly people – if you look at an portrait of a naked 14 year old child and feel sexual arousal, the problem is with you not the image.

Aye, the methods employed appear to be more controversial than the art.

As with any potential issue of morality, it will be siezed upon by the Daily Tele and “everything is okay” extremes; and thus denied any chance of a logical or sensible debate.

Art is may be; but pictures of nude kiddies kinda makes me uneasy. Police busting down the doors of galleries makes me even more so.

As far as I can see all this fuss has come because of one single complaint about a recent show of Hensons. He’s been making this art for years.

These right wing nutbars should concentrate on mass media images that actually do harm girls but glorifying sluttiness (bratz), encouraging anorexia and boob jobs (barbies) and generally trying to turn 8 year olds into make-up wearing, fashion conscious mini-women.

Totally agree Ingeegoodbee.

All this fuss over art- it’s hardly advertising itself as “barely legal” type stuff. I for one do not object- live models have been a part of artistic creation for eons and I don’t think legit artists should be censored so quickly.

Hehe, ingee said ‘balls’ in a nude context. Funny pun.

Left? I think you’ll find this confected outrage is the doing of a band of self-appointed moral guardians led by that well-known leftist rag the Daily Telegraph.

Hopefully, if they do have some of his nudes they’ll have the balls to display them. I just don’t get all the outrage comming from the uneducated left on this issue. Since when did being nude suddenly imply a sexual context?

landscape rather then portrait? or as in the land?

The National Gallery’s collection of Henson is almost entirely landscape based.