Prove It! The Latest 'Birther' Angle

Why do I find this photo - actually, not the photo itself, but the political pressures to release it to the press - so thoroughly disturbing? You can read the context here at The Guardian.

I am not a shooter. I don't need to be one in order to appreciate the danger of firearms or to criticize 2nd Amendment fundamentalists. Likewise, I do not use, possess, or traffick in child pornography. I do not not need to have done so to appreciate the harm that it does or to criticize those who do use, possess or traffick in it. I am an absolutist on the second issue. But I am not an absolutist on gun control. Don't ask for a photograph of me shooting. Just take my word for it.

Passings ~ Teri Shields (1933-2012)

This is an odd post. Terri Shields was - to the best of my knowledge - neither a photographer nor a model. She was the parent of an attractive daughter and, as such, placed the girl - Brooke Shields - in front of the camera as a child. As s result, Terri was among the early exemplars of the exploitative adults against whom I have inveighed here repeatedly. While I support neither extremist reactions of "child pornography" nor the censors who trail in their wake, I have a difficult time getting a grip on what parents and photographers and editors are up to much of the time.

Terri Shields has died. There is an obituary here at The New York Times.

Fashion Models & Unions?

Yesterday, The Guardian ran this story on the exploitation - there really is no other term for it - of young fashion models. The story revolves around Kate Moss and a particular shoot - some of which I've lifted above - from 1990 when she was sixteen years old. The photographer was Corinne Day, now deceased. It seems that this story underscores the need for unions or their equivalent - like the Model Alliance (U.S.) and Equity's Models' Committee (U.K.), both mentioned in The Guardian piece - to watch out for the interests of models. Note that in the Vanity Fair interview that instigated the discussion, Moss herself never suggests the possibility. She looks back, suggests she knew she was being exploited, but offers no remedy beyond the kindness of friends.

Where is the Pornography in this Image?

For the second time in as many days I start by recommending that you head over to BagNewsNotes and read a post - this one - by Michael Shaw. Then head to Conscientious and read this one by Joerg Colberg. Each post explores the wide-ranging issues raised by the use of the image I have lifted here. It was taken by Katie Falkenberg and has become the center of political dispute because community-slash-environmental activist Maria Gunnoe incorporated the image into a slideshow she constructed as part of testimony before the House Committee on Natural Resources. The image depicts a young girl bathing in nasty water caused by a mining technique called mountaintop removal in the area where she lives in West Virginia. For her efforts, Gunnoe was detained - at the instigation of staff from the committee - by Capitol police and questioned as to whether she is involved in the production and distribution of child pornography.*

I have written here repeatedly about the multiple vagaries of child porn. Whatever we might put into that category, this image here does not fit. Unless, that is, you find it pornographic that people are compelled to live in such conditions. But the pornography here is political as well. The Republican leadership of this committee - the Chair is Douglas Lamborn (R - Colorado), the staff who called the police are his minions  - is truly despicable. The act is called censorship - not just of this image but of Gunnoe's testimony.
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* If you want to see the context within which Gunnoe presented this image, you can find a link to a pdf of her testimony here.

A Pox on All Your Houses (2)

Photograph © Jason Lee Parry.

Hailey Clauson is yet another teen-age kid being used by adults for fun and profit. The image lifted here, taken in 2010, has been used by Urban Outfitters (among others) on a tee-shirt and published in some rag called Qvest. And Hailey's truly, truly disgusted parents have now filed suit against the retailer and the photographer (reports here and here). We've seen this sort of thing before, indeed we've seen it over the course of decades (e.g., [1] [2] [3]). Once again all the putative adults - starting with Hailey's parents, her handlers, and the photographer Jason Lee Parry and his crew and going on to the publications and stores who've used the image - are culpable. They are peddling the young girl's sexuality - let's be frank, her leather encased crotch - and they know it. All the squabbling and recriminations and legal and media posturing is just the aftermath of a bunch of morally deficient adults who have engaged in indefensible behavior.

The fact that the "outraged" parents have filed suit despite allegedly having been present at and/or approved the photo shoot, seems especially hypocritical. You are farming your kid out to sell s!*t folks! I'd ask "What were you thinking?" - but either you weren't or you were thinking simply of the green. I'm not sure which makes you more loathsome. Doesn't matter. After all, even before the pictures were snapped you might have asked "What is my 15 year old daughter wearing here?" Does she wear those lace-up leather hot pants to school?

For his part, Parry still (as of 10:30 pm EST, 23 August 2011) has the offending shot up on his web page - so, despite his protestations or (no doubt feigned) naivety, he is soaking up the notoriety. Jason, here is a hint: just because a kid's loathsome parents are around, you can still exercise some adult judgement. They may be wholly venal, self-absorbed and corrupt; are you too? Your web pages announces that you are "self-taught." Nice. Now go learn something about exploiting kids. Of course, being less explicit would undermine your status among the fashionistas. Couldn't risk that. Twit.

Jan Saudek and the Australians

Black Sheep & White Crow (1995) ~ Jan Saudek

Well the Australians are at it again, allowing the offended least common denominator sensibilities of some exhibition-goer to intimidate them into censoring the work of photographers. This time organizers of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale have reportedly removed the work pictured above from their exhibit. The photograph is by Czech photographer Jan Saudek. Why has it been removed? Because a woman complained to a bunch of government agencies that the image displayed a mother pimping her young daughter. And the agencies made it clear to the organizers that future public funding for the Biennale could not be assured if they disregarded such insightful public comment.

Government officials in Australia seem to be even more simpering than those in Britain or here in the States in situations like this. I am not persuaded by the offended woman's interpretaiton of the photograph. Neither am I a huge fan of this sort of work. But the decision to censor and self-censor is simply craven.

Petra Collins & Thylane Loubry Blondeau ~ Does It Make a Difference Who Is Behind the Camera? Or Only Who Is In Front of It?

Both images © Petra Collins.

I have posted here repeatedly on questions of exploitation, sexism, and censorship. You can follow the various labels below for samplings. And I tend to be pretty harsh about adults who use teenage girls for their own enrichment. I also tend to be pretty damning of male fashion photographers who manage to eroticize war, torture and violence - all for fun and profit. Blah, blah, blah. I make exceptions and always take umbrage at conservative politicians who endorse censorship (and curators or photographers who embrace self-censorship) too.


So, here is a question: If you have a bunch of images of teenage girls, taken in clearly provocative poses, do you object? What if the girls are in various states of undress? What if the girl is - like Thylane Loubry Blondeau - just ten but her mother thinks it is OK (it is Vogue, after all!)? What if the photographer is herself a teenage girl? As I have said previously, I actually think the issue is less sex than the venality of adults and publishers and handlers (agents and agencies).

Australia ~ Photographers Self-Censor

"Stop Or I Won't Shoot!"
Photograph © Linsey Gosper

Australia is a long way off. But here at the other side of the earth we can learn lessons from the Australians. A couple of years back I posted a number of times about the effort there to censor an exhibition by Bill Henson. The fruits of that effort now seem to have ripened. Here are remarks from this essay photographer Linsey Gosper published in The Sydney Morning Herald:

"Censorship prevails, not only through policy, the media and institutions, but more significantly from artists themselves.

From my personal experience as a photographic artist, and from conversing with many diverse Australian photographers, the most common change in the creation of art now is self-censorship."

This is a forthright statement. It will no doubt displease not only the censors but the photographers who are assiduously avoiding them. And the latter will surely condemn Gosper.

I must say I am unsurprised by this analysis. We have seen self-censorship and much less forthright discussions of it elsewhere and for the same reason. So, my question for Ms. Gosper is "what is to be done?" Having written the essay, is there a venue for challenging the oppressive atmosphere in practice?

New Label ~ child porn?

Girl and Cat (1937) ~ Balthasar Klossowski de Rola.

I have posted numerous times here about the travails artists and photographers who have encountered censorship, formal and informal, justified by the fear of "child pornography." At Salon.com you can find this interesting slide show of works (some of which, I've noted in my posts) that have generated "controversy" along this dimension. Most of the images (including the one I've lifted here) are readily available on line. There is no doubt that that makes them available to perverts. But there is no doubt too that museums and media outlets and politicians are way too concerned about the sensitivities of everyday people. There are issues to be discussed and argued over in all this. But blanket censorship seems to me a poor substitute for such interactions.

Pollitt on Assange

"WikiLeaks is revealing information citizens need to know—it's a good thing. Assange may or may not have committed sex crimes according to Swedish law. Why is it so hard to hold those two ideas at once?" ~ Katha Pollitt

Pollitt, of course, is correct. And as she also notes, there is a real possibility that the prosecution of Assange is being pressed as assiduously as it is for political reasons. There are after all, well documented pressures from both the U.S. government and individual commentators to retaliate against Assange specifically and Wikileaks generally.

All that in no way means he should not have his day in court; or, that his accusers, should not have theirs. (By that I mean that both parties in what is an adversarial process should be able to avail themselves of all their legal options.) But - and here Pollitt is off the mark - it is a mistake to draw an analogy between Assange and Roman Polanski, who also has fought extradition in a rape case. After all, Polanski confessed to drugging and raping a 13 year old. In that sense, he has had his day in court. And, of course, Assange's accusers are both adults. In a complicated case like this it is important not to inflame issues by making far fetched comparisons. Pollitt is typically much more careful than that.

Not only that, but not all Assange's defenders are easily characterized as clueless men. He has had his thoughtful defenders too. It turns out to be pretty complicated (not impossible) to keep all the balls in the air on this matter.

Self-Censorship and the Uses of Discomfort

From: Immediate Family. Photograph © Sally Mann.

In The Guardian today this a review by Sean O'Hagan of a newly opened retrospective of work by Sally Mann. (You can find an earlier notice here.) Here are two interesting passages. The first addresses an early series of images Mann calls Immediate Family.

"It featured black and white images of her three children, often naked or partially naked, as they played and posed in the woods, lakes and rivers around her home in rural Virginia.

The images, some of which are on show here in the 59-year-old American's first British retrospective, are by turns beautiful, disturbing and unashamedly sensual. Perhaps more problematically, all of them are, to one degree or another, staged. [. . .]

"Many of these pictures are intimate, some fictions and some fantastic," Mann said of the series, "but most are ordinary things that every mother has seen." Well, maybe, but not every mother has restaged and then rendered them in such a darkly beautiful and ambiguous ways. Intriguingly, none of the more outrightly provocative photographs have found their way into this show, which is an edited version of a bigger retrospective exhibition that has already toured Europe. Whether this is down to lack of space or fear of public – or tabloid – outcry is anyone's guess, but one could argue that something has been lost in this excised version of the series: the sense that Mann is walking a tightrope between reflecting childhood sexuality in all its lack of self-consciousness and staging it in often dramatic reconstructions. This, in effect, is where the true power of her art lies.

I will give O'Hagan the benefit of the doubt here and assume he is simply being ironic. Of course the reason the "more provocative" images in the series are not being displayed is that the gallery and/or photographer anticipated public complaints. So, instead of censorship we get anticipatory reaction. If I don't show you the provocative images I won't have to worry about being forced to remove them from the show. In other words, the censors have done their work effectively before the exhibition is even mounted.

Here is the second passage, this one a typically hand-wringing worry about what we have a "right" to show or to see.

The other, even more disturbing series on show here is entitled What Remains (2000–04), which approaches death and dying head on. Mann gained access to the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Centre, a place that would not seem out of place in one of Chuck Palahniuk's darkly humorous short stories. Here, bodies that have been donated to science are left outside in the woods so that the process of organic decomposition can be studied by forensic scientists.

Mann's close-up images of these rotting corpses are not for the faint of heart, but, again, the prints – made by an old-fashioned chemical method called the wet-plate collodion process – have a Victorian feel that is almost painterly. One does, though, feel like a voyeur when looking at images such as this. They raise the ethical question of whether a person's decision to donate their body to science gives scientists the right, at a later date, to grant Mann permission to photograph that – decomposing – body. (And whether the result should then be displayed as art. )

From there O'Hagan quickly turns to the safe subject of photographic technique. Apparently it would be OK for a crime novelist to describe rotting corpses. And it is OK for forensic scientists to study them. And it is OK for us to watch the various CSI programs on television. But Mann's images (stylized as they are) are somehow beyond the pale?

Perhaps, I am wrong, but is O'Hagan here hinting that we ought to self-censor more than we already do? It is difficult to tell since he lauds Mann for her creativity and courage and seems to esteem her work despite "all the uncomfortable issues it raises." Doesn't Mann's work stand as an indictment of censorship and self-censorship? Doesn't it suggest that what we need is to see what photographers show and then engage in critical argument about where the bounds of taste and morality are located? Then photography can contribute in useful ways to self- and social and political exploration and discovery.

I'm With the Rapist ...

At the Cannes film festival photocall for Palme d'Or contender
Des Hommes et Des Dieux (Of Gods and Men), French director
Xavier Beauvois holds a T-shirt to show his support for Roman
Polanski, who has been under house arrest in Switzerland since
last December. Photograph © Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

I came across this photograph at The Guardian; let's say it falls into the category of the truly astonishing. Roman Polanski had sex with a 13 year old girl, confessed to the crime, and then ran away to avoid serving his sentence. What cause, precisely, is it with which Mr. Beauvais (and his friends) is demonstrating solidarity? Is it the cause of men who rape children? Or is it the cause of justice being applied differentially according to one's financial wherewithal? Just wondering. Perhaps Mr. Beauvais should consider switching to this tee-shirt:

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P.S.: And, of course, there are fresh allegations about Polanski's predilections for young girls. While he is innocent until proven guilty, I am sure he will want to have a full airing of the latest charges in court, no?

PETA Porn

I have written here on several occasions about the irony of PETA exploiting naked women (usually very minor celebrities) in the name of animal rights. Well, in their latest campaign the PETA folks have just gone ahead and featured porn star Sasha Grey (whom they euphemistically describe as "one of the youngest—and most popular—working adult film stars today.")

Censorship and the Exploitation of Children

In The Guardian a week or so ago was this column discussing the removal recently (on fear that the museum would fall foul of obscenity laws) of a photograph from a London exhibition. The putatively offending photograph is this 1975 image by Garry Gross (who still holds the copyright) of then-10-year-old and obviously quite nude Brooke Shields. The image is entitled "Spiritual America." I thought of just letting the matter pass, as it seems clear to me that while Shields has been more or less systematically exploited by adults - including, at least, her parents, film directors and, apparently Gross - over the years, her experience is not terribly far from what other parents and photographers do to other young girls. In short, I think what's problematic here is less about sex (which is, as I noted in this post, also referring to Shields, a highly ambiguous category) than about money - the parents are venal, the photographers are like sharks at the scent of blood in the water, and the kids are exploited for adult gain. The 'gain' I would add combines monetary and psychological 'benefits' of various sorts to the adults.

Having said that, the arrest of Roman Polanski for raping (yes, that is the right word) a 13 year old in 1977 has prompted me to think about the Shields matter anew. Polanski ought to go to jail for a crime to which he has confessed. But what about the adults who exploited Brooke Shields? Surely there were pornography laws and specifically child pornography laws in the U.S. in 1975? If not, then the current exhibitions have nothing to worry about. If you are wondering about the analogy I've drawn, please recall that rape is about power and exploitation not about sex.

Sexting ... "and it Rhymes with P"

"Trouble, oh we got trouble,
Right here in River City!
With a capital 'T'"

At The Nation is this smart essay - "Through a Lens Starkly" - by Joann Wypijewski on the insanity of prosecuting kids for making and receiving child pornography because they are "sexting" - taking and sending putatively sexual or provocative pictures of themselves over cell phones to their friends. Scandalized, moralistic town fathers and mothers abetted by draconian laws are prosecuting (or threatening to) teenagers for the heinous crime. As Wypijewski notes:

"The recent attention to teen "sexting" has focused quite a lot on the presumed self-exploitation of kids, not so much on the prurient reflex of grown-ups who spy on and punish them. It has dwelt quite a lot on the traps of technology, not so much on the desires that precede picking up a camera. Quite a lot on the question of whether the teens are sex offenders or merely stupid, sluttish or mean, not so much on the freedom to see and be. Quite a lot on the legal meaning of images, not so much on the ways in which making them might delight, or on the cultural freakout that colors law, images and how they are perceived."

As a result, kids in many states are facing prison and years (lifetimes?) as registered sex offenders for the "crime" of being kids. If they were not going to ruin lives, the antics of the prosecutors and teachers and politicians and other authorities would be as pompously silly as Harold Hill.

Pretty Babies

At Eurozine I came across a provocative essay (first published, it seems, at Index on Censorship) entitled "Pretty Babies" by art historian Anne Higgonet. She has a truly sensible, non-alarmist assessment of the recent rash of "child pornography" and censorship cases that lately have popped up in among art and commercial photographers, as well as elsewhere [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Higgonet, it seems to me, is pretty much on the money:

"Contrary to what hopeful censors would have us believe, the overwhelming majority of pictures of children, clothed or unclothed, are ambiguous. Sexuality is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Yet despite the subjectivity of virtually all interpretation, child pornography law persists in attacking pictures, rather than in pursuing cases of actual abuse against real children. If you can prove that a photograph was made by forcing a real child to commit a physical sexual act in front of the camera, then by all means hunt down and prosecute the adults involved in those acts. Pictures could be used instrumentally as evidence, instead of becoming the crimes themselves. Prosecute actions. Let the pictures go.

[. . .]

Economists believe in a concept called revealed preference. Don't pay attention to what I say, the concept teaches, pay attention to what I've done. According to the revealed preference of our laws and budgets, we care more about pictures than about people. How can we justify spending precious resources on the gargantuan yet futile surveillance of the Internet when we claim to have none for the simplest social programmes that protect and shelter children from abuse where it is most likely to happen? How can we have the resources for endless expensive law cases about pictures when we supposedly don't have enough to pay for social workers, health care, preschools or after-schools?

As with all so-called sexual crimes against adults, the real issue is the way in which sex can be turned into a form of power. If we fixate, not even on the most convoluted and indirect definition of sexual abuse against children, but on fictional representations of that convoluted and indirect definition of sexual abuse against children, then we will not confront the most horrible ways in which we systematically abuse our power over children. The purpose of child pornography law is to protect children. The effect of child pornography laws ultimately hurts children."

And, if you are inclined to object that this is a liberal apologia for permissiveness, I suggest you first consider the example that animates Higgonet's essay. The absurdity brings home her point.

Net-Censorship

From the series The Romanian Way (July 2007).
Photograph © Maarten Dors.

This post comes compliments of my friend Henry Farrell who passed along this story from Reason detailing the ongoing vicissitudes of this photograph (a 13 year old Romanian boy smoking a cigarette) on Flickr. It has been removed and then replaced apparently due to corporate uncertainty about whether it violates the site's rules of appropriateness. You can find Dors's Flicker page here. The bizarre episode began, according to Dors, when he received the following email summarily announcing that the image had been removed from his site.

case354736@support.flickr.com

Hi Maarten Dors,

Images of children under the age of 18 who are smoking tobacco
is prohibited across all of Yahoo's properties. I've gone ahead
and deleted the image "The Romanian Way" from your
photostream. We appreciate your understanding.

-Terrence

The Reason piece uses this case to illustrate the complexities and vulnerabilities of posting on Internet sites like Flickr which is owned by Yahoo. It seems pretty outrageous to have corporately based morals police deciding what counts at appropriate or not. (In the Dors case, for instance, he points out that there are other images in the same series showing young kids sniffing glue. The Flickr-folk did not object to those.)

That said, I must admit that I am not a big fan of "community" as a governance mechanism. As Amy Gutmann once quipped 'Communitarians want us all to live in Salem but not believe in witches.' Decentralization and community are attractive only so long as they are not shot through with asymmetries of resources that differentially situated parties can rely on to insure that interactions work out to their own advantage. This seems to me to be true in real world situations (see the essay in Pranab Bardhan. Scarcity, Conflicts & Cooperation. MIT Press, 2004) and there seems to be no reason to think the virtual world is qualitatively different in that respect.

In all likelihood the folks at Reason would take a different view of this matter. But there are (at least) two important features of the Dors case. First, Yahoo/Flickr is a private not a governmental operation. A public entity arguably would be more accountable than a corporate decider like Terrence. Second, we would always want to ask 'what is the alternative'. Given a choice between community standards and corporate morality police, and absent some credibly responsive public governance structure, I don't like any one's chances.

Those Wacky Aussies Are At It Again

This from The Age: Just as the fracas over Bill Henson had mercifully faded away [1] [2] [3], Art Monthly Australia brought out its latest issue with a picture of a nude girl on the cover and additional nude images inside. The image, made by Polixeni Papapetrou, and depicting her young daughter Olympia*, has, predictably enough, generated a new uproar. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is once again front and center, professing to have "very deep, strong personal views" on the matter, while announcing "Frankly, I can't stand this stuff."

Australian critic Robert Nelson, who defended Henson against Rudd's diatribes, and who is married to Papapetrou and is Olympia's father, offered the following retort: "It's interesting that if the Prime Minister comments on, say the greenhouse effect, he gets expert advice first . . . I would like to know which art expert advised him on this."

It seems to me that Nelson is right here. The PM's "personal views" hardly suffice as a criteria for what counts as art or what ought to be protected as free expression. Nor, I would add, should the personal views of outraged Aussies writing in to the morality police to whom the magazine has been referred. On the other hand, it seems clear too that Nelson, Papapetrou and Art Monthly editor Maurice O'Riordan have published this cover story simply to re-ignite the fracas. And that does smack of using naked Olympia to make political hay.

In one of her less insightful moments Hannah Arendt condemned the civil rights movement in the U.S. for relying on children as part of a strategy to de-segregate public schools. Does publishing nude art photos of one's daughter in the name of free expression rise to the same level of importance as insuring poor minority kids access to decent schools. (We can set aside the question of whether the intended improvement actually occurred.) Does publishing these photos place Olympia at risk in the same way that the civil rights movement (to take just one example) did with young black kids in the American south? I am not entirely persuaded on either count. But, especially since the good guys seem to have prevailed in the Henson fracas, I feel compelled to ask ' What is to be gained here?'.
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* I have to say that as is the case with Henson, I am distinctly underwhelmed by Papapetrou's kiddy pics. But, as with Henson too, I don't see any particular reason to get one's knickers in a knot about the entire thing.

Germain Greer on The Henson Flap

"Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece.
She promised that she'd be right there with me,
When I paint my masterpiece."
~ Bob Dylan

In The Guardian today is this typically smart essay by Germaine Greer on the recent (apparently ongoing) controversy surrounding the censorship of an exhibition by Australian photographer Bill Henson. (The Gallery page is here.) Apparently,Australian PM Kevin Rudd has pronounced the Henson photos "absolutely revolting." While I am underwhelmed by the photos by Henson that created this uproar (and said so here long ago), Rudd surely is simply playing to the outraged crowd. Greer nicely compares the Henson photos not simply to various well-circulated media and fashion images but to a painting by Botticelli that apparently has been festooned across the London Metro. Referring to Rudd, she concludes, "the man who rejects them [Henson's photos] with exaggerated horror is appalled not by the works themselves but by his own response to them. Innocence is not an option." That is why the Dylan lyric seems appropriate. And, of course, an exhibition of his paintings is making the rounds at the moment here in the U.K. too.

Untitled © Bill Henson

Of course, all this brings to mind the similar flap in London, just a few months ago regarding the advert for a Cranach exhibition that was censored too. Here are Greer's comments on that flap too.

Henson Flap

Untitled (1992-93) ~ Photograph © Bill Henson

I suppose it is not really surprising that Australian authorities are censoring an exhibition of Bill Henson's photographs. You can find some of the details here. I am not naive enough to imagine 12 and 13 year old kids are asexual. But they are kids. And I really don't find Henson's work depicting pre-teens in various states of more or less provocative undress terribly interesting. I have said as much here before. I like his ships way more. But given that we have 15 year old girls posed like this - in various states of more or less provocative undress - on the cover of mass circulation magazine covers, it is hard to get all that worked up about a gallery exhibition. Here is the statement from the gallery about the censored photographs. And, let's be quite clear, what is going on here surely is censorship.