"They that know no evil will suspect none."
Ben Johnson
Fine art is not exactly having such a fine time. Once again, the rights of both artists and aesthetes are presently under siege. On February 23, 1998, an Alabama grand jury indicted Barnes and Noble, the country’s largest bookseller on charges of child pornography. The charges stem from the retailer’s possession and distribution of the photographic volumes of David Hamilton’s The Age of Innocence and Jock Sturges’s Radiant Identities. The indictment claims Barnes and Noble disseminated "obscene material containing visual reproduction of persons under 17 years of age involved in obscene acts."
Both artists and aesthetes have undoubtedly confronted the questions: what is art and what is pornography? Is it simply a question of taste? Or is there a concise divide between art and pornography? If so, where does one draw the line between art and pornography? Is a work eliciting eroticism art or pornography?
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines pornography as "the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement."
Sexual excitement is a broad and arbitrary term which finds itself at the whim of one’s perception. Each individual has a unique faculty of perception. Perception flows from a foundation of knowledge and allows one to judge the character, quality, or lack thereof, based on a system of values. One may perceive a steak as evil because it came from a slaughtered cow, but another may perceive the same steak as good because he simply loves steak and doesn’t care where it came from. The same principle holds true when applied to aesthetics. One may perceive Donatello’s statue of David as child pornography and as an obscene recreation of a young male in the nude, while another may perceive it as a brilliant work of art representing the beauty of youth, masculinity, and virility. These are applicable examples of how one’s perception is arbitrary.
Still, there is much debate over the subject of pornography and art. While the debate increases, our right to make the decision on our own decreases. A group called Operation Rescue, led by Terry Randall actively seeks to remove material the group considers objectionable from bookstores and libraries. Randall blatantly urges his followers to make trips to bookstores and tear pages from the books of Jock Sturges. Randall is not alone in his crusade to destroy. Focus on the Family, a group led by James Dobson’s ministry distributes fact sheets to its members calling the artist’s work "child porn books". These individuals are known to have struck more than two dozen book stores in more than eight cities around the country. Several of the vandalists have been arrested. Randall Terry hopes the arrests lead to further uprising among his followers, but ultimately his hopes are to see artists like Jock Sturges and David Hamilton arrested and prosecuted.
These incidents have caused Barnes and Noble to keep all Sturges’s books under lock and key. On the Upper West Side of New York, Sturges’s books can only be viewed while in the presence of a security guard. The irony of the situation is that Barnes and Noble sells James Dobson’s books.
Since the 80’s this country has been a pressure cooker of right-wing hullabaloo. This uprising has produced religious zealots who seek to censor and destroy all material considered "obscene", "objectionable", and "harmful" to children. Film, TV, art, and most recently the internet have been subject to these groups whose creed is anti-rights, anti-individualism, and anti-freedom. Many of the adjectives used by these groups to define the material in question are vagarious and arbitrary.
In 1988, Colonel V. Doner published a book entitled The Samaritan Strategy which directly spawned Pat Robertson’s Conservative Christian Coalition and the Samaritan Project and indirectly Operation Rescue and other religious right-wing groups. In his book The Samaritan Strategy, Doner wrote, "Pornography is not just poor literature, it is the fuel for almost unlimited sexual exploitation, sexism, homosexuality, and the rape and molestation of thousands of children." He also believed "soft core" pornography leads to violence and he makes a cacophonic cry for its elimination.
After publication of The Last Day of Summer in 1990, Jock Sturges got his first glimpse of the religious right’s impact when FBI agents raided his studio and confiscated all of his work and equipment. He was charged with production of child pornography. He immediately filed a lawsuit to combat the charges. After 15 months of collecting investigative evidence against Sturges, a grand jury threw the case out. Several of his photographic subjects traveled from Europe to testify on his behalf. These individuals proved the integrity and credibility of Jock Sturges as an artist. Sturges was successful in proving his photography was indeed fine art and not pornography.
As with any issue, it is important to look at things in the full context and especially when confronting and combating a charge such as child pornography. The proof lies in the work. Sturges’s Radiant Identities includes 60 black and white photographs of adolescent girls and boys with their families on location at a naturist beach in Montalivet, France and in Northern California. In a photograph entitled Arianne and Her Mother, Sturges successfully captures a moment of radiant intimacy shared by the young girl and her mother. We have the privilege to witness these two lovely creatures lying together on a blanket in the sand. Both mother and daughter exude absolute femininity and solace in this portrait which depicts the essence of a strong and functional relationship between mother and child.
In the portrait taken of Cecile, we see a young girl sitting alone draped from the waist down in a blanket. Her arms are wrapped around her torso giving a symbolic sense of self-love. The girl glances pensively down emanating peace and solitude. The composition and its subject are timeless.
With Hanneke, Sturges portrays the explicit androgyny of a young girl standing tough and topless in a skirt. Her beauty stems from the implicit confidence within her soul and dances from the page into one’s heart. Lean, young, and strong Hanneke portrays the essence of youth and Sturges captures it brilliantly.
In an epilogue to Radiant Identities (1994), entitled "Metaphors of Metamorphosis", noted photography critic A.D. Coleman provides a great deal of insight in defense of Sturges’s work and its persecution. She recounts the first time she saw the artist’s work in the Fall of 1982 at the San Francisco Art Institute, "The fact that he’s willing to look closely at people this age, see them as individuals, and address the fullness of their being indicates that he’s come to terms with his own sexual nature. Since so many student photographers today address issues related to their own sexuality, this suggests he’d make a fine teacher. And his craftsmanship is impeccable."
Jock Sturges is not alone in his genre of photographing adolescent girls and boys. Two of his peers, David Hamilton and Sally Mann are under scrutiny as well. Mann’s volume of photography At Twelve (1988) has been the subject of great controversy for its depiction of adolescent girls as sensual and eroticised. This particular work portrays only a few girls semi-nude, but we discover sometimes less is more. Mann’s subjects are local girls who live in nearby in the woodlands of Virginia. Her photography contains a great deal of symbolism and the subtle nuances of adolescence.
Sally Mann provides more than just portraits of the girls featured in At Twelve, the works are untitled however, among the photographs she intersperses the background of the subject or her own descriptions of what the subject elicit. One photograph in particular, Mann shares the story of how she got to know a family by drinking tea with them. At first, her work was scrutinized, but scrutiny led to curiosity, and later, the acceptance of her profession. The family allowed Mann to photograph their daughter Kelly. The entire family turned out at dawn to watch the photo session. In this photograph, Kelly is seen standing in front of four slaughtered deer. Despite her nervousness, Mann happened to notice a pattern of V shapes on the scene and took full advantage of it producing this evocative composition.
One of the three semi-nude pictures in Radiant Identities is a photograph of a young girl sitting on a statue of a dog. Her skin looks summer-bronze even though the photograph is in black and white. Her blonde, french-braided hair rests upon her shoulder. Her arm rests casually the head of the statue partially reveals her breast underneath the tanktop. The girl’s left leg appears to be scratched perhaps from a hard day at play. Symbolically, the portrait suggests the girl is turning her back away from something, but what? Childhood perhaps?
One photograph that is overtly symbolic portrays a father standing in front of his house dressed in a suit with one arm protectively wrapped around his daughter. The father’s face is shaded, but the girl’s is not. Her expression seems languid, yet impatient. She appears tolerant of her father’s protective nature, but her eyes speak volumes of her volition.
One must have an open mind to view the work of David Hamilton. Hamilton has been photographing young girls for over 30 years. His images capture youth and beauty, innocence and strength, confidence and vulnerability. Like Sturges, Hamilton’s subjects live in the South of France and Northern California and he has photographed these young girls for generations.
In his retrospective, Twenty Five Years of an Artist, David Hamilton provides the aesthete with a treat of a tremendous body of work. Some of the images include not only young girls, but a number of landscapes, architecture, and still lifes of flowers. Hamilton prides himself as an artist who uses techniques of the great masters such as Cezanne and Rodin. His writing is spread throughout the book, lending a auto-biographical account of his work to the reader.
In one passage, Hamilton notes, "There exist among young girls, within a clearly defined age group, some rare beings who are able to exert a powerful erotic attraction upon certain much older men. It is a kind of magic, a fleeting charm which touches such men, of whom I am one, in a secret part of their sensibility. By means of photographs I make a sincere confession that few men, bewitched as I am by the forbidden desire, will dare to make."
David Hamilton provides a forum for this "charm" and "magic". In viewing his retrospective, one will find a spectrum of emotions. Some of his photographs elicit a sense of eroticism and others an extraordinary sense of innocence, youth and beauty. To view his work is like peeking into a room or showing up at a beach where girls are allowed to be girls.
In a photograph entitled The Hayloft we get a glimpse of two young girls dressed in beautiful peasant blouses and skirts. One stands with her back to the camera, the sun casting an aura of light in her hair and around her. Another girl stands near gazing at the other. Her thoughts left to interpretation.
Shameless is a portrait of a young girl lying on the arm of a leather couch. The photograph appears to have the qualities of a painting with its diffused light and colors. Very much in keeping with Hamilton’s style. The pose and composition are utterly exalted.
Alexia portrays a young girl lying on her side with her back to the viewer. The supple curves of her buttocks and torso seemingly glow in the sunlight. Her hair is french-braided and curves gently over her shoulder. This portrait seems to capture the girl at rest and at peace.
The two things these three artists have in common is the subjects of their photographs: young girls both adolescent and prepubescent, and the controversy which surrounds their work.
In comparison of the three as a whole, David Hamilton’s work is perhaps the most erotic of the bunch. It is far from pornographic, but one may find his work eroticises the girls more so than that of Jock Sturges or Sally Mann.
This leads us to the question, what is art and what is pornography? Art is a selective recreation of reality and is comprised of a number of media- photography, literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, dance, etc... Art is subject to great controversy when it dances on and across the line of eroticism. A thing is considered erotic if it incites sexual arousal. Ultimately, sexual arousal is subjective to the individual’s taste and preferences. What may be sexually arousing to one may not be to another. For instance, the sexual fetish one may have for leather. For the individual who holds a fetish for leather, a simple photograph of a pair of leather pants may incite sexual arousal. A painting or sculpture depicting a nude subject is certainly a more intense representation of the human form, but is it erotic? Is nudity itself erotic? Is it necessarily erotic if it features the image of one individual or several individuals nude and not conducting sexual acts? These answers must be left to intelligent interpretation. There are divisive lines between what is pornography and what is art, but it is possible for a work of art to inherently incite sexual excitement and still be art.
Pornography would necessitate the depiction of individuals in a myriad of sexual situations. This could be anything from auto-eroticism involving one individual to a number of situations involving two or more people sexually stimulating one another. When one thinks of pornography, one usually thinks of a magazine featuring various images of sexual acts, or a video or story of the same quality. Pornography has its place in society as a stimulant for sexual excitement. However, portraying children, especially prepubescent children in pornography is a different matter.
Children are indeed the future. As a culture, we should nurture and relish a child’s development and encourage their growth into creative and productive adults. Every adult on this planet has experienced life as an infant, a toddler, a prepubescent child, and an adolescent. The urgency of attention should be focused on how we can help the young develop rationally and functionally as opposed to driving them into a world of shame and dysfunction. The only advocates of child pornography and molestation are child pornographers and molesters. It is heretical to compare a work of art to a heap of garbage!
Children inevitably
mature into adults, but it is a process which takes years of growth and
experience. In the United States, one is considered to be an adult at the
age of 18. This age, however is arbitrary and doesn’t account for the individual
who may be physically and mentally mature at the age of 14, 15, 16, or
17. We have instituted many laws which seek to protect children from abuse,
molestation, exploitation, alcohol, and cigarette smoking. Children’s rights
are, de facto, limited. Children are not free to legally choose to have
a drink, a cigarette, or in some cases sex with someone whose age may only
differ by one year because of statutory rape laws. The age of consent is
usually 18, but in some states it is 14 or 16. However, if a child decides
to kill someone, he could be tried as an adult in some states. This code
of punishment for minors is becoming more and more the norm in the United
States. Is it possible the legislators are recognizing individuals, regardless
of age, must take responsibility for their actions?
Freedom and consent are the key issues when considering the legitimacy
of artists such as Jock Sturges, Sally Mann, and David Hamilton. Each artist
attains the permission not only from the subject, but also that of the
parents of the subject. An individual has a right to be photographed and
the photographers have a right to photograph the individual. This right
is guaranteed by the First Amendment and the First Amendment does not discriminate
against age, creed, color, or sex. Any form of suppression, whether it
be images or information is unconstitutional. Unfortunately, there
are groups of individuals who seek to nullify the Constitution- the document
which encourages us to pursue and gives us the power to do so by
granting us freedom and liberty which make such happiness possible. Liberty,
the power to do as one pleases without infringing on the rights of others.
Liberty, the freedom from arbitrary whims and despotic control which seek
to infringe upon those rights. The meaning of liberty has escaped the minds
of the people making laws in this country, but not the mind of the artist.
Artists of all genres
have a hard road ahead of them. A vocal minority who view sex as inherently
evil are setting up roadblocks of censorship and suppression every chance
they get. The controversy surrounding Barnes and Noble will soon pass.
Jock Sturges, David Hamilton, and Sally Mann will continue to create evocative
images of youth and beauty. As artists, they are at liberty to selectively
recreate the world in which we live. Their work captures the essence of
youth, beauty, innocence, and complexity of children, adolescents, and
their families. This is the nature of artistic freedom!