Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I agree and disagree with much of what you write but that makes for a lively debate and this subject has been one of the most discussed on this board as well as just about everywhere else.

If you leave the board there'll only be Eliot Ramsey for me to battle with. And he's making too much sense at the moment.

Now Melbourne photographer artist Victoria Larielle is to stage a nude kids exhibit - this is becoming a case of the most fascinating proportions and where it ends who can tell?

I believe one factor could overcome some of the problem: at present we have no categories of this material as they do in the UK. where the most dreadful rape type pics of small children that involves adults are classed as catergory 1 type and carry the severest penalty, but photos of just naked children are classed as type 3 and carry a lesser sentence. It's all a very sticky problem but at present we are treating the crime as though a teen girl who nicks a bit of make-up from Woolies is equal to a vicious gang of bank robbers who may bash a bank teller.

Thanks Angela for taking the matter seriously and for your gracious comments.  And Ian MacDougall for the link to the article by Guy Rundle. 

I am no prude...I love the pornographic Japanese 15th and 16th century wood block prints of copulating men and women.  They show sex in all its intimate ferocity and tenderness (to my eye at least).   Those prints are indisputably art and they are indisputably pornographic.  One classification does not negate the possiblity of the other. 

I am not opposed to cinematic sex: I adore the film "In the Realm of the Senses" and the woman who introduced me to it;  I love as well the work of Almodovar and the feminist film maker (Breillat?) who made Romance and others using explicit footage of sex.

But I am opposed to using subjects under sixteen.  I am very much opposed as well to presenting those subjects, as Rundle is at pains to point out, in ways that show the subjects as bruised, despoiled urban waste; just so much junk flesh for the pleasure of those who don't have to live with the reality that Henson's aesthetic vision presents.

Henson will be reconsidering the wisdom of persisting with his subject matter in the face of earlier criticism.  He may be wondering what a future wiil be like where he sits in a room with a junior constable as they both look through his image bank and the constable says:

"What is the name of this child?  And where is the consent?"

The actual photos were not checked for clearance, only those on the websites with the boobs covered. That is so bogus but the complaints were only about the websites and that is all ACMA covered.

Now will you stop the hysterical nonsense. Enough. I do not want my grand daughters photographed in the nude for wankers to wax over about the lighting.

Got that?

Good.

"Anyone who believes that the great artists of the past waited for their models to reach puberty before daring to portray them naked is a blind fool.

Renaissance paintings are festooned with the naked bodies of babies displayed in the most fetching of poses; small naked boys sit splay-legged on the steps of temples and astride beams and boughs. The public that saw them included pederasts and pedophiles, but nobody deemed that a reason for not showing them. The Christ Child sat astride his mother's knee displaying his perfect genitals. Though dirty old priests might have taken guilty pleasure from contemplating them, the rest of us are still allowed to see them.

More reticence is observed with female figures, mainly because female models were hard to come by, but the first genuinely female nudes were often pubescent or prepubescent. The closet Venuses of Cranach and Baldung, for example, have the undeveloped hips, small, hard, high breasts and pallid nipples of 13-year-olds. Botticelli's Venus is hardly older. Greuze's girls, with their white bosoms glimpsed through disordered clothing and tear-filled eyes, are not only very young but violated as well. Bouguereau's Cupidon (1875) and Child at Bath (1886) are far more disturbing images of vulnerable immaturity than anything created by Henson, but paint may do what photography may not. If Henson had painted his young subjects, the police would have no situation to investigate."

- Germaine Greer, 2 June 2008

Richard:  I've been waiting, Eliot,  for someobody to bring up Nabokov's Lolita, which was in my high school curriculum, and have been surprised that nobody has. 

Or the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's fussing around the deshabille Alice Liddell in between writing Alice in Wonderland and crafting sermons for Christ's Church Oxford?

Perhaps since Lolita went off the banned list even in Alabama in 1982 there's little cachet to be had turning the clock back quite that far?

Richard Tonkin: "Well, there you go.. the pictures Rudd called "revolting" have been cleared for general release. Not "R" nor "M", but "G" ..."

An outcome which, based on the historical precedents set by other such moral panics, was entirely predictable.

The real question is: What do such moral panics actually refer?

The great moral panics of the late 1950s, the 1960s and early 1970s were perhaps convulsions erupting around the immense demographic changes that ushered in distinctive youth cultures (comic books, rock and roll music, videos, etc) combined with growing permissiveness and openness about sexual relations.

Huge numbers of people born around the late 1940s and early 1950s started reaching adolescence at the exact same time that the western world was entering a period of unprecedented economic prosperity.

Young people were consuming distinctive, often radically original, cultural products (everything from mini-skirts to television) and simultaneously exhibiting unprecedented, highly conspicuous openness in a range of behaviours.

I think that may have driven the panics back then. The realisation by the Greatest Generation that they were ceding power to the Baby Boom generation of the Youth Quake.

But the modern paedophile hysteria has been going on for at least a decade, and seems to focus with almost complete randomness on this or that person, this or that institution, often in ways only tangentially connected with actual episodes of child sexual abuse.

The new elements that seem to get people especially excited are digital images and the internet.

Is it just my impression, or do people who one might be expect to be reasonably and genuinely concerned about child welfare, and who otherwise may actually express a reasonable degree of concern about, say, sexual abuse within the family, schools, or other institutions, go completely berserk, however, when it comes to images of young people on the internet?

It seems to me it's the supposed "power" of new media, and the mystique of digital technology itself, which contributes to the underlying anxieties driving the sorts of melt-down we saw in recent days over the "G-rated" Henson images.

Ian MacDougall: "Eliot has chosen not to answer the following question. So I would ask you Justin, and those of a stance supporting yours, where you would draw the line."

Well, actually, that's just a variation of the "defending standards" argument that has been employed throughout when Henson's enemies have been unable to provide evidence of any harm been done to anyone.

If you recall, right back on May 26, 2008 at 12:41pm I said;

"The morals police, having nothing by way of evidence, will take a step back, claiming instead that Henson and the art community are contributing to an overall  "decline in standards" or that Henson's work is conducive to "a climate which encourages perverts" or "indirectly influences the welfare of children though these particular children, we are sure, are in good care"

The fact is, there is no "single line" that any of us should "draw" with respect to what other people think is "moral".

In the absence of evidence of harm, we should do nothing.

The other dodge being employed is to demand "proof that harm has not been done", as if such a thing could be possible, especially when the morally panicked actually confuse their "values" with "fact". So, when they see their "values" threatened, they feel they are the victims of some kind of "factual" attack?

Take consolation that at least Henson's images don't "encourage" incest, like this outrageous filth from Richard Wagner;

Fricka: "My heart shudders, my brain reels; marital intercourse between brother and sister! when did anyone live to see it; brother and sister physically lovers?

Wotan: "You have lived to see it today...That these two love each other is obvious to you, listen to some honest advice...smile on their love, and bless Siegmund and Sieglinde's union..."

- Gotterdammerung, The Ring of the Nibelung 

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.

Richard:  I've been waiting, Eliot,  for someobody to bring up Nabokov's Lolita, which was in my high school curriculum, and have been surprised that nobody has. 

Again thanks to Michael de Angelos. You like Greer too eh? On reflection shouldn't be surprise given I'm so fond of her myself.  For me, I suppose, a consequence of a process of mellowing both on my part and hers, since the strident days of thirty or forty years ago. Funny how many women hate her. Because she can say it like is, as to human relationships without concessions to sentimentality and the need for a good emotional alibi.

Whilst at the Age I went further, reading an interesting article by a photographer concerning the paranoid reactions toward him in an age of obsessive surveilance.

Then a gem. Hidden in the Lifestyle columns of allplaces, and buried under a welter of ads, an article entitled "Girls gone wild?" , by one Sonia  Harford. The site is easily identifiable by a posed and slightly  (unlike Henson's) erotic photo, comparatively speaking.

A purportedly drunk girl out at night sits in a gutter with microskirt rucked highup round her thighs, with long legs akimbo leading down to feet clad in the spikiest, kinkiest  stilettos you've seen for long while.

No one will whine for months on end about this tarty, fruity little public- open photo, because the  Henson photos are judged on different and to my mind, artificial criteria.

But mention of it is included because the lamentable understanding or comprehension of so many contributors to this thread, as to what might constitute "erotic" , for a male. And on top of that,  so many "experts" who  have never been male in their lives and therefore couldn't , authentically, know what turns men on any way.

But back to article.

It dawned on me that so much of  Henson is hated and especially by women, because it is out of the habituated context of cheesecake and advertising that relies on a type of market sanitisation that sentimentalises eroticism to alow for its socially accceptable commercial employment .It relates to an image of "femininity" that hides rather than uncovers reality, honesty and reality. People who look at  Henson's photos won't feel comfy like they will in the presence of the conventional photos, because as both men and women, in being forced to confront "the Gaze", they are forced back onto an unsentimental vulnerability , where all the layers and veneers that disguise the real person, both from others and self,  ( as society intended) have been peeled away.

In short, Henson is spookily  "different"  because of the  context ,  precisely precisely because it is smart enough to refuse habituated complicity and consciously transgresses structural and associated cultural norms. Its interogating established forms as good art has done since the Impressionists.

Out of the context that art lovers would have seen the photos let alone distorted further, through the lens of emotion ridden mass media distortion, the conversation between artist and audience is distorted by alien noise and a sort of loud, ignorance based braying, but this has itself provided an interesting social eventing, that people like Michael De  Angelos, Fiona Reynolds and others elsewhere, have had the wherewithal to seize upon.

To be shown to be also a sexual being is not the same thing as to be reduced to a sex object.

 That is the fundamental distinction here. If you are unable or unwilling to make it you have nothing to contribute to this discussion but confusion.

I am as disgusted at the raunchification of our culture – e.g. kids made tarty to advertise jeans or bathers in the colour supplements of the Sunday papers – as anyone on this thread. Celebrity and raunch are two of the largest products of the information economy because they consist of words and pictures, both eminently disseminable by the web.

Child pornography has increased exponentially over the last 15 years or so becase child slavery has, slavery of all sorts has. It's now called "human trafficking" and it is the result of the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and Middle Europe and parts of Latin America, brought about by the at-gunpoint application of Friedmanite economics; by the spread of the Sahara and the resource-wars in that part of Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq…

If you want to do something about child pornography, attack its causes.

As for the proposition that the writer/photographer always privileges the powerful over the powerless, the viewer over the viewed, that is such ludicrous poppycock that if I tried to make a list of examples I'd be here a week. That case is most clearly and explicitly stated in the first chapter of Reading Lolita in Teheran, if you want it made for you. The reversal of viewer/viewed goes back at least as far as the Salon des Refusees...

The really interesting questions are: Why Henson? Why now?

Plus ca change. This is where I came in.

I know you are not a naive person! Now that it's quite clear that it's the internet angle the cops are going after of course Henson will be charged if they decide - which I think they are champing at the bit to do - as the producer of the material. Who placed them on the net doesn't even matter but as far as I know both the gallery and Henson had some of the pics on their own websites anyway.

Now some of you may be getting the idea of the treatment that has been meted out to many people over the past few years who have been charged for being in possession of child pornography and most likely, through no fault of your own, believe they had in their possesion material of the most horrendous type. 

Many have been charged with having pictures similar to Henson's without the "artistic" defence - most plead guilty because they are the sort of people who have never ever faced the law before, are married with kids and wish to get the matter over with as soon as possible. They face a sustained campaign by the police and a vicious media that perpetuates, nay almost threatens to tear their lives asunder if they choose to fight ( plus the financial ruin that comes with it). Throw in a few of the worst cases like the recent police prosecutor charged who did have hideous material, and you see how all people are demonised as being of the same catergory.

What we don't have in this country, which they do in the UK, is various categories of defining porn which makes all the difference where the very worst means a jail sentence and the mildest probably probation.

Go the the Age also today to read Germaine Greer's unique take on the whole matter - always gets it right in my mind.

Unfortunately I think she is wrong on one point - if Henson is charged I believe he will be found guilty but receive no more than a fine if that.

Again, you can blame the odious Bob Carr for putting NSW in the position of having extremely bad laws in this matter - they would have been far worse if he hadn't had the always decent Bob Debus with a fine legal mind always battling the legally ignorant Carr who even wanted to backdate the laws during the big bust 5 years ago. All that did for many of those charged was actually bring out dozens of barristers who offered to work at rock bottom prices as they were so incensed at the fool of a premier.

And I wonder now how Edmund Capon and indeed the arts community and especially the gallery in question that hosted Bob Carr at so many functions while he took the dual ministery of Arts Minister at the time feel. All taken in by the ultimate phillistine who was just a budding banker for all his pretensions which were adequately demonstrated when the ABC foolishly allowed him to travel to LA and interview an 81 year old Gore Vidal who finally revealed what a complete plonker Carr really was.

He would be the first witness I would call (and he was the first to seize on racial divisiveness as well - long before J.Howard).

Ian: "Where do you suppose Cate Blanchett and Mike Carlton might draw the line?”

Would it not be better to direct that question to Cate and Mike?

Guessing the ideological or moral boundaries of another person is generally a useless (and sometimes arrogant) exercise; at least as far as this exercise goes.

In a way the question itself is indicative of the uselessness of where we are going in regards to this matter.

Who knows what really goes on in the corridors and alley ways of somebody else’s mind and imagination, let alone our own?

Who knows what intimate emotions can be stirred by a (very) personal relationship with a work of art (or anything else for that matter)?

This is personal, very personal as Guest Contributor in her own touching way explained to us. Her further analysis of artistic presentation and appreciation should also be noted by all.

Who knows that the pose of a girl and a smudge on a singlet could crystallise the insecurities and dreams of an emotionally isolated (young) observer who so desperately wants to connect, and like us all, love and be loved, while contemplating the moral minefield lying ahead, and the socially conditioned archetypes that may have to be sacrificed, or rather, let loose – the road to freedom?

The visual relationship that develops between the observed and the observer is totally personal, transcends “morality”, is psychologically timeless and for many beyond words.

Maybe that is why art, in its many manifestations, is so important to many, however, because of the complexities of the human condition (especially sexuality) art is quite often misunderstood and confronting. But that is art and what artists like to do, for whatever their motives.

In my personal life art has never motivated me to behave in a manner that betrayed my personal rules of behaviour. It has however touched me in many ways; in ways I’m sure we can all identify with. It helps me experience and understand who I am; and who I am not. It can be your entertaining companion; your consoling lover; your bottle of booze when the blues set in.

So what about you, my fellow traveller, has art (ever) done you no good?

Has art caused you to do ill to others?

Has pornography ever caused you to impose unwanted sexual behaviour on another human being?

Has viewing any visual presentation whatsoever caused you to hurt another human being?

Have you ever needed to ask yourself the above questions?

At the end of the day I suspect we all feel, subjectively comfortable in relationship with all the manifestations of art, pornography or whatever is available to us. We make our own choices. Our problem, as usual, is others; and what lurks in their minds and imaginations; where do their boundaries extend.

We can, if we are not careful, become psychological voyeurs; a pastime that proves nothing, rather exposes our own insecurities, self doubt and superficiality? Unfortunately we usually disregard that possibility.

So what have we achieved (in this particular case)?

What started out as a commercial relationship between an artist and a child (with parental approval); a relationship that up until now has (most likely) done no harm to anyone at all (physically or emotionally), has been turned into the scandal of the century.

Shock and horror from many who claim their objections are purely to protect the child. And now that very child, they so dearly want to protect, has to deal with the fears and anxieties of her protectors; demons that under less hysterical circumstances would never had to be faced; or at least not yet.

If we want to protect this particular child then why create an atmosphere that will threaten her, that will frighten her, that will suggest she has taken part in a revolting, disgusting and pornographic act?

Yes, her parents should have thought twice before allowing her to be pictured naked and allowing those pictures to go public; not so much because of what those pictures may or may not represent; rather because of the very display of behaviour we have experienced from her self appointed "protectors" who use this affair to bring attention to their particular agendas; regardless of her on going welfare and the unnecessary attention she will get.

Pragmatically speaking no (real) good can come of this now – no good at all; it will neither promote nor mitigate paedophilia, only harm an otherwise innocent kid.

Richard: You've nailed something here at the end, Justin. I met an autograph hunter and her mother the other day, the mother telling me that she didn't know why her daughter had always wanted to be famous. I did, easily.

OK.  Speaking to some 30ish men  - young to me, but possibly not to others on the thread.

They were adamant that the photos were NOT sexual in any way, and immediately morphed into the fact that many/most? of their most stylish, successful pursuing females - ok, that's the pick and choose way it is for these guys -- had brazilian waxes.  And that this, which they said was a high school wet dream, was now a total, sometimes physical,  turn off.  They want to have sex with women, not little girls.

They REFUSE  to be turned on by children , but their voices sounded quite angry as they said that  it's becoming more difficult, they tell me, to find young women who haven't succumbed to the infantilisation message of our culture, and altered  the bodies to look more like pre-pubescents .

Bill Henson expresses this perfectly.  he is reflecting a culture, not initiating it.

A sick culture.

I don't think that these young men's  wishes or opinions will matter a jot in the long run, though, to a corporate world.; anymore than mine will.

What sweet naivety from those who see "oh,but it's art" as somehow apart from this.

At least this hyperbolic thread seems to have established that the images are controversial.

And seen by some to be pornographic

By others to be erotic

And by others to be neither.

Ok?  Are we agreed? 

the images are controversial?

I'm interested to hear that your barrister mate says what he does Angela Ryan as it seems to me that it is the internet angle that is going to cause grief for Henson and the gallery.

As regards to intent,  the law looks quite muddled and open to several interpretations. As I said previously - Bob Carr said at the time he intended the law to be left in the hands of senior police officers to decide . Always a recipe for disaster. The fact that it's taking this amount of time would also seem to confirm that.

Having never seen these pictures in question, I'm still disturbed that considering the publicity being generated, newspapers are continuing to publish the faces of the children concerned. But this is a timely discussion to be having now no matter what the outcome - it will at least pull into line some of the more outrageous advertising aimed at using children in provocative poses to flog goods.

NB: I've heard the owners of the gallery in question are currently in Switzerland - perhaps they are going to ask for asylum!

Hi Kathy, nicely put. Did you examine the interview tape? There seems to be an edited bit in the middle. I always find edited bits interesting after a controversy. Boring, irrelevant or too relevant?

And thanks Michael and Ian for linking those articles by the Arena editor. He certainly giveth sharpineth to the issue points that penetrates even the dulleth of rhetoric speweth moutheths trying to confuse liberty and free speech into an issue with nothing to witheth sucheth. We are indeed out of the Victorian times, our Bibles are written in new English and illustrated in Manga and naked bodies and sexual permissiveness is in general a part of our society , but as so perceptively said in this article, with the safety of limits. (maybe Manga crossed those limits....for another time).

But back to the issue of naked kids photographed in erotica:

:"...There is nothing logical about the way we limit what children can consent to, or their parents on their behalf. But there are cultural boundaries that have deep-seated meanings. Nudity is one of them, and the power of photography is another. Henson's unmistakably sexualised shots cross that line. Whether the parents - or still less the children- don't have a problem with them is irrelevant.

Vogelesang's opponents were fighting bad laws. This one is being fought against a good law that artists want special exception from. Of course, they're going to lose.

And they're going to lose badly if they make it an issue of artistic privilege. People like child protection laws. The existence of a permissive society relies on law limiting the exploitation that it brings. Citing the Renaissance use of models doesn't do it either. Their child protection statutes left a little to be desired...."

Interesting again it is the Age rather than the SMH that seems more able to give air and ink to the issue rather than obfuscation articles by Grattan and others mixing political freedom and censorship up with this topic.

Honestly I start to worry about other articles written by such people and their ability to report the complexities of politics and distinguishing the actual issues ,but that is just my opinion. Does the hard world of politics s the other Arena article describe, also contaminate journalists understanding of issues as the people see them? Clarity comes from a distance sometimes. [David R: and clarity has always been your strong point, Angela ...] How did Margo survive there so long? I wonder what she thinks of that Arena essay about power politics and intellectuals contaminated by such. It was something I didn't think would be written in MSM for at least a decade, depending on, of course, upon whom was writing history.

And our unnamed anonymous contributor who wrote earlier about appreciating the head and neck shot of a girl and now writes :

..."

I am sure they do . I am sure some paedophiles do like clothes on, but luckily some supply them with naked kids so they don't even need to use any imagination.

And why did the photo of the girl and neck mean she was naked or there was any issue with it?? Head and neck are interesting shots and include the facial expression etc, and Henson types can take as many head and neck shots as he likes and all can display them but if the child was naked at the time (and why for a head and neck shot one might ask?) then there are child protection issues here, and if the naked photos of the child are included in sexual and erotic poses then again we have the issue of child pornography.

Whether you appreciate his "art " and own, like so many of his supporters, it seems, a photo of his is irrelevant to the child protection laws and pornography laws regarding children.

Fiona, await with interest your take on the law. What I read seems clear (as clear as such ever is) .A barrister mate has already commented to me that it is pretty open and shut were one to remove the celebrity artist status and put them in a internet site rather than an art gallery. The picture is clearer when viewed through such an unfiltered lens.

Intent is a slippery defense in child porn and protection cases when we have naked children photographed. Especially with plenty of non-disavowed critics and interviewers discussing the erotic nature of his work.

This whole bizarre event is starting to remind of one of Hans' stories.

... The body of the art world moving in unison with all its celebrity trappings as an omnipotent Emperor might parade before the peasants expecting fawning admiration ,yet ... again ... echoing the tale, one might hear the child speak  the all powerful and vain emperor passed by: "there are no clothes".

Cheers

PS Apparently it made him a better emperor. We shall see.

Guest Contributor says: 

"Wasn’t our new Prime Minister brought up in that same faith? "

This has been one of the most revealing moral panics in this nation's history, I'd say, for the extent to which it has flushed out doctrinaire control freaks disguised in a host of differing forms.

The anti-Henson crowd seem universally of the opinion that there is some set of absolute moral and ethical standards which dictate universal norms applying to figurative representations of the human form.

Likewise, there are un-ambiguous, timeless norms applying to "childhood" and "innocence".

According to these arcadian myths, these "norms" are the only appropriate, decorous subject matter of art, and anything departing from these is "perverse".

It doesn't phase them at all that this or that anarcho-feminist should share the identical standpoint on these issues as Tony Abbott, nor that self-styled post-structuralist Marxists should hear their opinions being echoed by Tim Blair or Miranda Devine.

Basically, the panic has tipped a wide array of sectarian dogmatists into the light of day, and perhaps only someone like the Freudian art and cultural historian Peter Gay could properly articulate the depths of libidinal anxiety which connects all these frantic paranoics, despite their apparently divergent formal catechisms and creeds.

The histrionic outpouring from Henson's critics are very Hansonite, indeed. Which reminds me;

Pauline Hanson remains a potent sleeper in Australian politics. The sentiments she embodies bubble perilously close to the surface of public debate. We saw them last week.

Hanson reportedly visited Camden to lend her support to opponents of the Islamic school.

But so, too, did Kevin Rudd.

Barely a week before the election, Rudd campaigned in the seat of Macarthur, which includes Camden, with the unsuccessful candidate, Nick Bleasdale. Bleasdale opposed the school. So, too, did Rudd.

He did so on "planning grounds", the Camden Advertiser reported.

Those proposing the school have appealed. It could well proceed. The issue is far from resolved.

Strong leadership is required.

It's a golden opportunity for a new prime minister.

- Paul Daley

Don't hold your breath.

Michael de Angelos says:

 Unnamed anonymous one, a sweet little diatribe about artistic value of a couple of photos, not the nude ones I think we are talking of, and not the issue.

Unless you're arguing that nudity is pornographic in itself, the photos I mentioned are as much at issue as the others. The issues with the photos involving clothes demand the same kind of meticulous self-awareness in the viewer as the nude photos – some paedophiles like their children clothed.

The same kinds of issues, arguments, and court injunctions followed the photographer Jock Sturgess for years. He works with very similar material. I have seen several of his exhibitions in local galleries here; I haven't found them pornographic, either. Some of the photos were less coherent than others, but that made them failed art, not pornography.

Richard's comment about let[ing] a miniscule minority of deviants dictate how we conduct ourselves as a culture is close to my position. It's analagous to Thomas Jefferson's refusal to trim his speech to the understanding of a 7-year old.

That was the unspoken belief of the culture I grew up in. The body, especially the female body, could only hope for moral approval as a life-support system for the head. Wasn’t our new Prime Minister brought up in that same faith?  

The shock of the nude is that the rest of the body exists in its own right; it is not also you, it is you; is not elided from existence by the small bathroom mirror or by the psychological deal with the devil your culture let you make at the end of centuries of theological demonization.

Guy Rundle writes in today's Age an excellent piece that agrees with what I thiought - the whole Henson matter was a car crash waiting to happen.

Despite those who are being described as the "art crowd" coming to Henson's defence which is their perfect right to do, or Malcolm Turnbulll and his ridiculous claims that art galleries should be exempt from police raids (one of the most bizarre defences to date of the case) Rundle points out the obvious - what happens if these images are turned into postcards and distributed in adult sex shops or via the internet on porn sites?

Another Age article concerns a matter I've mentioned previously - the prosecution of a man for downloading four child sex related fictional stories. This is very disturbing law. People have every right to be thoroughly disgusted by the man's actions but we are talking now about a serious attack on a person's thoughts. Whatever  fantasies lurk in a person's mind, will a day come in the future where authorities are able to probe into the brain and seek them out as well and order punishment for thought?

In a way Bill Henson should be congratulated for opening the door to a section of society mired in hypocrisy including many of his supporters and those who are against him.

How this matter will be resolved is one great mystery. Personally, Henson must be going through hell.

As Leo Schofield said in his introduction "your signature images are of young people in either dreamlike ecstasy or high eroticism."

And quite a blog commentary running in a similar vein to here. I wonder what reliable polls would show the community in all its demographics to think about this issue.

Hey Eliot:

“Oh, terrific. A "crime" in which neither the "victim" nor the "perpetrator" feel they've done anything wrong, prosecuted according to laws of a State where the "crime" didn't actually take place. Bring it on..."

Yep, that is what happens in child pornography and paedophile cases. Frequently there is a pimp adult who has authority over the child and the child has not the adult perspective and usually blames themself rather than the perpetrators. The pimp is paid.

And yes, the parent unit (not deserving the term mother) should have considered her 12year old's privacy before she allowed and sent her to the darkened studios for naked photos of all her bits by an aging adult who seems to be quite obsessed in such actions and areas. The term dirty old man comes to mind, and is such a label people would use without the "art" label defence.

Both the photos of a naked 12 year old and the deed of taking them are pornographic child abuse. Victorian laws are clear, I think Fiona (she who saves those who cannot spell) will agree as well upon perusal [Fiona: No, I don’t think they are quite as clear as has been suggested – the Vic position is more complex because the Commonwealth legislation is interwoven with it. Bear with me a couple more days – frantic at the moment.], but still await her greater experience with heavy tomes...

Unnamed anonymous one, a sweet little diatribe about artistic value of a couple of photos, not the nude ones I think we are talking of, and not the issue.

The artistic merit of the photos is irrelevant. Political censorship is irrelevant and not the topic. Huge suffering world wide is neither the topic nor issue. All the former are important but not the issue here.

The issue is child pornography and plenty of art critics in the past have discussed the perpetrator photographer's work as sexual in context and suggestion. Naked 12 year old children photographed by elderly male photographer in darkened erotic poses with sexual connotation and such displayed publicly and sold. It doesn't matter how much you enjoy such to look at it. Child pornography...

Again and again, art is not above the law.

As I said before and some wiser heads here have noted, art cannot be used as an excuse for child pornography, no matter how clever it is.

And Eliot, do you promise Nic will leave? Makes it even more gratifying. Cate we'll miss you. You can explain it to your daughter one day.

And Scott, I deliberately linked that one as it was looking at both sides and the irony at the end was indeed amusing. I am not arguing a case, merely expressing my outrage and expectation that the full weight of the law falls upon those involved without fear or favour or art or celebrity status. There is no need to argue any case. That will be the other lawyer’s job.

And Eliot, that Geddes lot was funny. :) I would sue if I was immortalised in the bee costume, I am sure that makes a complex in later life, a sting in the tale unsweetened by anonymity. Yellow is such an appalling colour. At least you have moved on from comparing his work to school photos. Well done.

Although Jenny, Kathy, and the ever balanced Ian have added to the debate for the rights of the child, I think Andrew has put it most clearly, pointing out darker issues that I had not even considered:

"One of the things I want to emphasise is the legitimising authority of art. Hanging an image on a gallery wall legitimises the social relations and especially the power relations embedded and symbolically represented in the image. Who represents who in art and how they are represented has long been a matter of critical appraisal in art theory and history. It is more of a case of who has the power to represent. Given that power, which Henson has as a male artist, the question we should ask is why does he present us with sexualised images of children? What is at stake here? Is it merely a personal obsession or is it a more generalised masculine gaze that sees other people's children as sexual prey?"

It was almost cathartic to read your last bit which so clearly presents the issue:

"What I see in Henson's works is that men can fuck kids with their dicks or their lenses. I believe that the ambiguity of his representation of adolescent and child sexuality symbolically mirrors precisely the way that sex abusers operate: they insinuate themselves into the trust of the family and vulnerable women and children and then violate that trust in the most insidious ways.

Commonly, post disclosure of abuse, the initial response of the non-abusing parents or other family members is disbelief and denial. I think in time that Henson's art will come to be seen symbolically in terms of a massive betrayal of public and private trust."

Although I am not sure how it got past, are our editors tiring? Beautiful use of language.

So can our heroes have feet – or up to the middle regions – of clay and still be heroes?

Cheers

PS and for those who think child sexual abuse is some uncommon event, are you waiting for the movie to prove it exists? (How could they film it?)

An unnamed friend is a doctor in suburbia. Not a week goes by without a new disclosure by an adult of abuse never spoken to anyone of before. It began to be traumatic for them to go to work. And as the events occurred years ago they are not reportable unless the victim agrees.

It is well and truly time for that Royal Commission into paedophile action, support and protection.

Child porn is the outer scab of such. Rip it off and drain the pus beneath.

(Artistic enough metaphor?)

And here are some pictures of children being children from around the world.

Different huh? [Fiona: I’m not sure how a pic of a wedding couple is relevant here, Angela. Rather nice shoulders, though, and I liked that hint of breast…]

"The most sickening aspect of this whole sorry affair is the police pursuing a 12-year-old girl "for questioning"."

Like something out of The Crucible, isn't it?

Scott Dunmore, thanks for the link to the Mike Carlton item. The surest sign one is winning any struggle against social intolerance is when Mike Carlton starts insisting that the victims of such repression had all along been "left wing intellectuals".  The great Marxstubator.

Another thought, in certain respects the abhorence the hysterics have shown for the naked human form, couched always in terms of their "concern" for the  "innocent" and "helpless", reminds me of the intense alarm of early European missionaries when they confronted naked indigenous peoples.