I have taken body crops where 2 images may look identical but to the viewer evoke a different reaction. This is related to the thought and energy present when the camera clicks.So if this can be felt in shots without faces I am sure it is equally so in shots where the face is shown.A tilt of the head alone does not in my opinion create a come hither look.

My personal belief is that photography of people can be empowering or disempowering.This is such a complex issue and in my opinion needs so much more deep thought to match the levels of emotion that have been ignited.

I would certainly be of the view that that sort of ‘over sensitivity’ actually detracts from the real business of protecting kids from harm.

I re-read Emma Rush’s report and it is a pity the scholarship is so poor because certainly the advertising and fashion (and by corollary the celebrity) industry have some issues to deal with, I just think she could have picked a much better target than DJs. There was a good response to her report in The Age last year, however I cannot find it now so they must have archived it, I thought it covered some of the shortcomings quite well–and no it was not Catherine Lumby.

Conflating Henson’s photography with the representation of children in advertising I think is completely erroneous. But a real question that has to be asked is what constitutes a sexualised image because we all seem to have different ideas about this.

I have read in different forums about the prevalence of the ‘come hither’ look. The scary thing about that look is that it can happen quite unintentionally if the subject being photographed tilts their head slightly forward while looking straight into the camera. My wife friend has an eight year old daughter; they got some family photos done and some of them turned out exactly like that, with ‘that look’. Well, her face looked about 16 in those photographs much to the shock of her parents. So there seems to be a lot of perception and psychology at play here. This is not to brush aside the issue, but I think we really need to start deconstructing what is actually happening here.

I am having trouble perceiving the ‘come hithering’ in Henson’s images.

Just a word on modern girls fashions. It certainly has got much more of an adult look than in times past. It is interesting seeing old photographs from 100 years ago where many children were dressed almost identically and different from adults. I read a discussion with fashion designers about 8 years ago saying that the move in children’s fashion was to make it more ‘casual, contemporary and funky’ and like ‘the teenage styles going around’. Well, teenage styles have generally been rebellious and provocative for some time, maybe going back to the 1920s flapper look. Now we have clothes cut for 16-21 year olds available for 5-11 year olds. I do not really think that the fashionistas thought through the consequences of this. Because it does make your little girl look awfully grown up. And while some of the little girls might like it—and there is a whole celebrity and tween magazine culture there to tell them they should—us grown up’s feel rather uncomfortable about it. All of a sudden your asexual little girl has transformed into a nymphet. And of this with the gender stereotypes embedded within it. Now I certainly do not think that all of this has been motivated by some sort of paedophile conspiracy. Many paedophiles like kids who look like kids. For example, the man who abused me liked to dress me in a smocked dress. Emma Rush’s argument that the poses in the catalogues will give paedophiles the message that kids are ready for sex is absurd because paedophiles already think that anyway, and I would hypothesise many would equally be turned off these images because of their more adult portrayal.

Now this is not to defend the adultification (and consequent sexualisation) of children that has happened in the fashion industry, but I think that the dynamics of what has happened here has not been explored fully. This has been as much about the change in the rest of us as in the fashion/celebrity/tween-pop culture. The constituent elements need to be explored much more deeply.

The rest of the thread has been all about discussing whether nude photos are in fact automatically kiddie porn in the first place. Perhaps you ought to read the other comments before commenting further.

If there was ever a need for a hard line to be drawn – isn’t this the issue?

Have followed this event with great interest and passion. For me the main concern was about our beliefs on innocence and our fear related to nudity and sex rather than just about how young people are presented in photography.

I have been making a living from photographing men and women in many cases naked for around 20 years.Whilst my photography has changed over this time my main motivation has always been to present what I find to be beautiful and to combine this with humility of expression.

On one of my websites I posted to say that I would not be 100% closed to photographing someone under 18 nude.I think there were about 180 responses many of which attacked me for such a suggestion. The general argument was that we must protect the innocence of our children.

I believe that many of the adults angered by this event are holding little or no belief in innocence and purity as being real. Society in my opinion has lost much connection to heart and truth and transperency. We seem more about appearances than honesty and a genuine desire to understand the ills of the world.

An issue such as nudity and children is such a sensitive one and seems to have much confusion surrounding it.Surely this is providing us as a society with an opportunity to take away some of the barriers that adults seem to have in regaining a belief in their own innocence and purity.

As it stands now I feel like many adults are protecting their children from what they see as a definitive about life. ie; That the world is not a pure place and never will be. That once you grow up you too will lose your purity so for now we are going to let you live in ignorance of how the world is.

I sincerely hope that this incident is not stored by most as confused judgment. I so believe that if humans are prepared to search their emotions deeply that we can create a much more pure and honest world. A world where we would not have so much fear for what our kids will discover when they grow up.

(Or am I the only one who, while I may have felt intermittently vulnerable in some aspects, but also felt a strong and growing sense of strength, freedom, and independence around that age?)

Brian made a similar point over at LP, that Henson’s work seems focussed on adolescent fragility without acknowledging adolescent strength. It’s all about hanging back from the brink of change instead of leaping over the gap, which is certainly what some adolescents do. Most of us probably vacillated between these two extremes at different times of the day, even!

The works definitely capture some components of certain adolescent angsts, but it’s far from an entire representation of the adolescent experience.

The actual images themselves are disturbing in other ways (even ignoring the vulnerability of the nudity). He’s not depicting them as having any power of their own, as far as I can see. In the pictures I’ve seen, they’re vulnerable, surrounded by darkness, crawling around, lying splayed. His interpretation of the emotions of adolescence are a very particular interpretation, and not a universal one at all. (Or am I the only one who, while I may have felt intermittently vulnerable in some aspects, but also felt a strong and growing sense of strength, freedom, and independence around that age?)

the ethics of instrumentalising adolescent bodies as a process of examining, as adults, our own thoughts or feelings about bodies and transitions … overprotectiveness and overreaction are a big part of the mix. But so is an attitude of ownership of adolescent bodies by adults, and that is profoundly wrong and is at the root of exploitation, sexual and otherwise … The causes of violation are all bound up in how our society works and we need to examine every part of it, including these attitudes of entitlement.

All of this evokes a big YES in me, and is particularly related to feminist arguments against a culture of sexist entitlement regarding the sense of ownership of female bodies by men. I’m still very interested pragmatically in the legal aspects and how they intertwine with the ethics of individual situations with respect to the dynamics of this particular case, but I fully agree that the examination of the broader societal ethics regarding conceptions of ownership and entitlement and gaze is ultimately more important.

I am talking about how we view the ethics of instrumentalising adolescent bodies as a process of examining, as adults, our own thoughts or feelings about bodies and transitions. That is what concerned me about the instant dismissal of how such a person would feel about the process later; it conveyed a profoundly rigid adult perspective and an absence of empathy. And although I agree absolutely with you that attitudes towards nudity which are bound up in shame are part of the problem, it remains a fact that in our society nudity represents a further degree of vulnerability and when the subjects are already vulnerable as a result of their age then I think that that is an important consideration. The people who keep saying that any objection is bound up with seeing nudity as inherently sexual miss this angle. The model’s nudity troubles me because she is in a state of ultimate vulnerability before the adult gaze. Of course that is the point, it is part of what we are supposed to reflect upon (perhaps) and yet it troubles me still.

I noted that the director of the AGNSW said that he sees many groups of adolescents who are really fascinated by Henson’s work and I definitely accept that overprotectiveness and overreaction are a big part of the mix. But so is an attitude of ownership of adolescent bodies by adults, and that is profoundly wrong and is at the root of exploitation, sexual and otherwise. Consider what Michael Gow said of Henson’s work:

Why can’t someone reach across generations to a young person and actually say, “I have been there and I now have the maturity and the technique to actually help you express that?”

WTF? He goes on to say that artists should be able to work beyond the limitations that society sets for itself. Again WTF? If we were living in a society where violation and exploitation were rare then I would have a lot of sympathy for that position but we don’t. The causes of violation are all bound up in how our society works and we need to examine every part of it, including these attitudes of entitlement. This is the kind of attitude that sees Roman Polanski as a victim simply because he is an artist. Fuck that.

Again I am talking about the trends I see in the way these issues have been discussed, rather than this specific case.