Is this photo
comparable to these?
Last week I was asked to comment on photos of little boys, described as reminiscent of the Bill Henson exhibition which included naked young girls and attracted significant controversy in 2008. There was now a “row” over the Melbourne exhibition featuring “naked young boys” holding guns.
The report in the Northcote leader reads:
“A LOCAL exhibition of photographs depicting naked young boys brandishing guns has fuelled claims of child exploitation.
The shots, on display at Fairfield’s New North Gallery, have sparked comparisons with Northcote artist Bill Henson’s controversial pictures of a naked pubescent girl.
Fairfield photographer Sean O’Carroll told the Leader he photographed his son and two nephews, aged two to three, naked and holding replica guns for the exhibition series titled “Boys, Guns Etc?”
A political party and national family group had criticised the exhibition.
So I had a look at the photos. While I understand that seeing images of little boys with bare chests and holding guns is somewhat disconcerting, they are not sexualised images. While there may be concerns about informed consent, these photographs are not remotely comparably to Bill Henson’s images and the comparison should never have been invoked.
The girl who featured naked on the invite to the Roslyn Oxley gallery was 13. While that photo was widely circulated, an even more graphic one of another girl was not. While I have partly covered her, I hesitated to show this second image at all. She is ‘Untitled 1985/86’, quietly auctioned by Menzies Art Brands, Lot 214, for $3800, only weeks after the controversy erupted.
The Henson affair is dissected in the chapter ‘The Gaze that Dare Not Speak Its Name: Bill Henson and Child Sexual Abuse Moral Panics’ by Dr Abigail Bray in Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls. She describes the image:
…the black and white ‘Untitled 1895/86’…peers down on a naked child on the crumpled sheets of a bed, her knees bent, her legs wide open, her face turned away from the camera, her lips parted, her expression blank. She is wearing childish bangles on both arms and an ankle ‘slave’ bangle. Her hair is in a ponytail. Her vagina and budding breasts are highlighted by Henson’s trademark manipulation of shadow. The girl is anonymous. However, to see the ugly sexual political context of Henson’s photographs is to be dismissed a hysteric, prude or worse.
While we need to be vigilant about the sexualisation and exploitation of children, it dilutes the serious concerns and genuine dis-ease about Henson’s sexual depictions of vulnerable naked young girls – and other overtly sexualised imagery of children – to somehow suggest a link between them and the little boys. Not every image of a child without clothes should be read as sexualised. We shouldn’t see child abuse in everything.
In my view, the photos of the boys holding guns juxtaposes their apparent innocence, curiosity, and affection for each other (one boy has an arm slung over his friend), with the harshness of the cold weapons against their skin. It prompts questions about the hijacking of boys by gun culture, about how we raise them on a diet of violence, how we strip them of their tenderness and empathy from the youngest of ages (see my interview with Maggie Hamilton re her new book on boys), how quick we are to mould and shape them in normative (and harmful) versions of masculinity.
I agree with the photographer:
You can watch the Channel 7 Morning Show piece on the issue below:
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/13004520[/vimeo]
16 Responses
I hae to say that I find the boy image equally disturbing.
Without understanding the photographers intent – I think it can be interpreted as a combination of homoeroticism ( naked boys embracing) all looking down in the same direction at central figures gun (phallic imagery with a bit of size comparison for good measure).
Yes it could be deliberately thought provoking as a piece – but I have to say I am tired of people using children in photography such as this. It is not photo journalism – for example young children being used as child soldiers but a staged piece where the intent is somewhat dubious – other than to make a name for oneself as a cutting-edge controversial “artiste”.
Interesting. When I look at the photos of the boys I think they are adorable. And I think that the photographer should be commended for using his art to question the socialisation of boys as violent. I think that to regard the photos as sexualised images is to see something that isn’t there. In contrast, some of Henson’s pics are deliberately sexualised. I had never seen the one of the girl on the bed, but upon seeing it, the doubts I had (as to whether his pics were sexualised or not) have pretty much disappeared.
Megan said; “but I have to say I am tired of people using children in photography such as this. It is not photo journalism”.
Uh no, it’s not photojournalism. A story is not being reported here. How on earth did you come to that conclusion? Children have been used in art, both clothed and nude for centuries. So the question is why now are people are up in arms about it? Also what gives you or anyone else the right to dictate what is and what isn’t art?
It also amuses me when Melinda says “While we need to be vigilant about the sexualisation and exploitation of children, it dilutes the serious concerns and genuine dis-ease about Henson’s sexual depictions of vulnerable naked young girls”. So it doesn’t matter when Henson uses teenage male models then? How odd.
And her statement “Not every image of a child without clothes should be read as sexualised. We shouldn’t see child abuse in everything” Oh, so Melinda only reads something as been sexualised when it suits her agenda, right? One example being the image of the model Laura Wells which she posted. She claimed this as being sexual, but how is it? All I see is a nude woman sitting. She even claimed that the footage of the shoot shown on ABC News included the model “squeezing her breasts” which obviously wasn’t true. She was covering her breasts with her arm. That’s it. No squeezing whatsoever.
Finally I must note the Classification Board rated the Oxley9 Henson photos “G”, and “PG” for the infamous one with the girl standing. The notes on the decision said in part “[the image of breast nudity […] creates a viewing impact that is mild and justified by context […] and is not sexualised to any degree”.
I don’t care what any celebrity has to say, or how much support he gets, the images of that young girl are child abuse. Bill Henson is no artist.
The parents of that young girl should also be held accountable for allowing it to take place in the first place.
The image of those young boys with a gun can in no way compare with that of the girl.
FMY @ says: ‘Children have been used in art, both clothed and nude for centuries. So the question is why now are people are up in arms about it? Also what gives you or anyone else the right to dictate what is and what isn’t art?’
I suppose according to your logic, if something has been going on for centuries then it should just continue. Slavery has a long history so that means slavery is OK etc…And any opposition to the continuing practice of slavery should just be shouted down with reference to the history of slavery. (Its been going on for centuries, so wots yer problem?).
And art, I suppose, is only ever just ‘art’… Seems like the the apolitical bourgeois need to bow before the grand alter of Art in an attempt to prove that one is sophisticated and not one of ‘them’ (moral panic wowser prudes from lower classes) is more important than critical thinking, or even commonsense…
I’d like to see how the Classification Board would rate the photo of the girl on the bed. But I suppose for you it is ‘innocent’ and apolitical, just ‘Art’…
Oh I love it the absurdity of your comments Dr Bray. So very entertaining. Linking slavery with children in art now? Wow. Words fail me.
As for “Untitled 1895/86” and having seen the original photo, like a lot of Henson’s work I find it rather unsettling (also like a number of his works, you probably need to see it in context with other photos in the series, something which I haven’t had the chance to do). I’m unsure how old the model in question is really. Seeing as the photo appears in the book “Photographs 1974 – 1984 by Bill Henson” published in 1989 by Deutscher Fine Art, one can only wonder why you choose to comment on an image that was over 30 years old and the photo had been exhibited countless times without a single problem. The book with that image has also been sold in various countries without any problem.
Regardless of what I think about his work, I have no right to ask to have it banned or to ask any artist to submit any work to the classification board to be rated as it has been passed as legislation in SA and I think NSW. It’s completely nuts. Legislation to solve a “problem” which didn’t actually exist in the first place. Can anyone name any child who has been abused in the creation of any artwork in the country?
FMY …
1. If “Untitled 1895/86″ passes classification anywhere that serves only to illustrate the sorry state of our sophisticated enlightened modern culture.
2. “Can anyone name any child who has been abused in the creation of any artwork in the country?” … no, I can’t. But can you say categorically that none have not? Or will not, as a result of the work’s publication?
Dr Bray’s analysis (in “Getting Real”) of the way “intellectuals” respond to those who find something disturbing in Henson’s photographs of adolescents clarified the issues for me, and I thank her for that. They’re not “art”, and I for one won’t be cowed into accepting that they are.
There is a name for people who photograph pubescent children with their legs spread and it’s not ‘artist.’
Sheryl said “But can you say categorically that none have not? Or will not, as a result of the work’s publication?”
Then Sheryl, where oh where are all the disturbed adults who saw this picture as a child? (‘cause you know, there’s always hundreds of impressionable young children hanging around boutique art galleries where Henson’s work is mostly exhibited). The photo has been published in a book in Europe (and still available for sale on Amazon.co.uk) as well as being exhibited in numerous places for at least two decades. David Marr for his book on Henson contacted a number of his former models and could find no one who said they were abused or mistreated during a shoot.
Sheryl do you really think that after many decades of using children as models in photography that no one would complain if child was abused during a shoot? There’s no issue to solve here. Photographers have been taking shots of children for decades now without any issues. It’s just the bizarre view on children that seems to have cropped up in the last decade or so. Like denying the fact teenagers are sexual beings and actually enjoy sex (as shown in Henson’s work, albeit rather darkly and in my opinion rather creepily and in an unsettling way), and that nude children are a no-no, despite the fact prepubescent children will run around nude quite happily (on the beach for example). Nudity isn’t always sexual, but some of you still don’t seem to understand this.
Dr Bray, in her “Getting Real” essay, said this: “to see the ugly sexual political content of Henson’s photographs is to be dismissed as hysteric, prude or worse” by the art intelligensia, who, quite wrongly, think that they are the only people possessing rationality in this debate.
How beautifully your last paragraph illustrates her point, FMY. Thank you.
I have never seen ‘Untitled 1985/86’, and I do find it a little concerning, but in light of what I’m going to say next, I’m not prepared to pass judgement until I (if ever) see the original, or a full reproduction.
I never found the Roslyn Oxley photographs sexual at all. Indeed, I found them movingly beautiful. Rather, I should say I never found this particular photo sexual until I saw it reproduced here. I think the act of censorship on this photograph – the black bar – has sexualised the image. That makes the image far more disturbing to me than the original, as it suggests that there is something damaging in the original, when there certainly is not. It draws far more attention to the girl’s breasts than Henson intended. This effect can be seen in other media, consider the Nirvana ‘Nevermind’ CD cover, or the ‘fig-leafing’ of Michelangelo’s David.
This is certainly a complicated issue. Consent is clearly an issue with regards to children. There is no doubt that Roman Polanski did commit statutory rape, and that he should be punished. However, pictures like this are a much murkier situation for me. Consent plays a role, but it is certainly reduced, otherwise parent’s shouldn’t be allowed to take any pictures of their children. (Although, there has been outrage at parents attempting to take pictures of their kids playing team sports, so maybe there is something to it…)
When does a picture of a child playing naked in the bathtub become a problem? That the image exists at all? If it’s shown to a grandparent? If it’s shown to the child’s first long term relationship partner? If it’s published on the Internet? What if the child, as an adult, publishes it on the Internet? I don’t think there’s an easy thick black line that can be drawn here.
The other issue that concerns me is some of the outrage around these pictures causes far more harm than good. With the Henson case, the secret location of the National Gallery of Australia’s storage facility was made publicly available. This meant much more security was needed. Police were drawn off cases of actual abuse in order to deal with the Henson outrage. The child abuse unit of the AFP were “absolutely ropeable” to be wasting their time on something they thought wasn’t abuse, when there are real cases of child abuse they could have been working on. How much longer did some abuse victims suffer because the limited police resources were forced to be directed elsewhere? And finally, I think a child abuse victim should have the last word:
http://newmatilda.com/2008/05/28/purity-and-shame
Hmm, first of all the boys are not naked, but topless…
Just to get this right in a nation, where such an image is already regarded as illegal porn.
Secondly, it is extremly stupid by the artist to ask the viewer to start using his/her brain, whether we are misguiding our children during their upbringing in not making them aware of the consequences, weapon might have.
In a time, where wars are fought for no reason at all, our ex PM (Howard) stills walks free for helping to invade a foreign country (Iraq), the attempt to wake up a war lustern nation can only be seen as very very naive.
The artist O’Carrell has now to live with shame. It is wrong in our society (with severe double standards) to show photos like he did, but right to kill in excess of 2 million people.
Unfortunately I believe it is too late for our war hungry nation…
ART is in the eye of the beholder..ask bill to refute that artists mantra…so if we see pornography in those images…our opinion is just a valid as the ‘HIGH ART EMPERORS’..who are really naked by the way…it’s pornography… soft core..totally exploitative of those childrens rights and the ‘artists’ should be scrutinized in this way..AND held accountable for the attempt at passing off deviancy as high art…what a joke… and i am a painter with a family history of successful artists and art theorists… i see porn…full stop..the Emperor is wearing no clothes…Keep up the good work awake ones..there is a duty of care to the children here..
would the term Lateral abuse apply here?
well that’s my opinion anyway…from what my eyes tell me..