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[Thaluikhain]

Found them?

Weren't they removed from everywhere cause they had naked kids in them?

And Visi, why are you looking at what people are saying is child pornography?

[Invisible Friend.]

No, Booky found them for me yesterday, they are still around.

[Thaluikhain]

Spose everyone has been downloading them because of the media fuss...well done that, nothing like free publicity.

[.]

did a bit of a bill henson google image search...

a lot of his work seems quite nice i reckon. and there are many pics where "bits" are tastefully shadowed/covered etc. not too sure about the fully naked ones - but then i'm not really a fan of full naked art anyway - regardless of age or gender.

hmm it's a tricky issue i reckon.

[Thaluikhain]

Well, yes and no.  I mean, as soon as anybody makes a fuss, everyone else has to jump in and make a fuss as well, before someone asks why they aren't.  Child pornography is too emotive for anyone to risk being seen as being slow to denounce it,

[Kelchables]

I'm not too researched up on it yet, but I think from reading an article from 2003 about his work makes it clearer what he's trying to acheive - the concept in the art.

The Australian artist Bill Henson is commonly seen by the art institution as a passionate photographer of twilight zones: of the ambiguous spaces that exist between day and night, nature and civilization, youth and adulthood, male and female, light and dark.

but then it goes on to talk about not being able to quite put a finger on what's disturbing about it.

Personally, I don't think it's child pornography, but you know, if he gets off scott free, then it's going to leave a bad impression. I don't know how to solve the problem, but there's such a line between these sorts of things that it's sort of confusing. I was thinking may there could be some sort of system you have to get through if you want to publish works like these, to certify it's not child pornography, but then you'd need a board of people deciding what is or what isn't, and it could easily send the wrong message.... so really the only thing I'm certain on... is the one or two I've seen bad resolutions of - I don't think are pornographic, if you understand the concept of Henson's photography.

[pseudonym]

Interesting opinion article in the Herald about it all - "You could sell tickets to this farce".  Good point made at the end, that paedophiles are still going on about their business, undeterred by this circus. 

On the subject of "artistic merit" - is the intention of the art what is being tried here, or the interpretation?  Maybe the exhibition would have attracted people who get off on pictures of kids, but so do dance school concerts, kids' swimming carnivals and public beaches.  Will the wowser brigade to demand that kids are dressed in mini burquas until they're 16?  People jerk off to the kids in the Kmart underwear section - is that porn too?

I had a look at the photos - I can't see anything in them that suggests that they've been sexualised.  They are artistic photographs - they've been obviously posed and lit, and the photographer is well-known, and well-known for naked photography.  I can't imagine that the intention was child pornography based on the photos though.  Until he comments publicly, or the parents of the kids who were photographed comment publicly, then how are we to know what the intention was?  All we have is the knee-jerk reactions of a few politicians, the most forefront of whom hasn't seen the photos.

Anyways, the cynic in me thinks that it's a huge beat-up.  The NSW police win points by being seen to be doing something about child pornography, and they can't stop the internets.   

[Phenolphthalein]

Arts elite attacks PM over images

KEVIN Rudd's handpicked cultural advisers have confronted him over his attack on Melbourne artist Bill Henson and have warned that Henson's potential prosecution damages the nation's cultural reputation and risks "a repressive climate of hysterical condemnation".

Cate Blanchett, Nobel prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee, Melbourne University Publishing head Louise Adler and writer Peter Goldsworthy are among the prominent figures whose names appear on an open letter condemning allegations that Henson "is a child pornographer".

Close to half the delegates to the cultural stream of last month's 2020 forum have put their names to the letter, which invites Mr Rudd and NSW Premier Morris Iemma "to rethink their comments about Mr Henson's work".

Mr Rudd has labelled Henson's photographs of naked teenagers — seized by police from a Sydney gallery last week — "revolting". Mr Iemma said they were "offensive and disgusting".

Read the rest

[rebmA]

An interesting discussion and debate.

I'm prepared to be branded a wowser, but the idea of a much older man sitting in a room taking photos of a naked 12 or 13 year old girl makes me uncomfortable.

Also, I beleive that they're inappropriate because a) at that age, the child isn't able to fully understand the consequences of having a naked photo shoot, and can't therefore make an informed decision about the course of action they wish to take, and b) even though her parents apparently gave consent, I don't believe that it's their role to say who can and can't take nude photos of another person, even though that person is their daughter.

[Bookworm.]

An interesting discussion and debate.

I'm prepared to be branded a wowser, but the idea of a much older man sitting in a room taking photos of a naked 12 or 13 year old girl makes me uncomfortable.

Also, I beleive that they're inappropriate because a) at that age, the child isn't able to fully understand the consequences of having a naked photo shoot, and can't therefore make an informed decision about the course of action they wish to take, and b) even though her parents apparently gave consent, I don't believe that it's their role to say who can and can't take nude photos of another person, even though that person is their daughter.

Hang on, your stance doesn't make sense. You said that parents shouldn't have the right to determine what is done with their naked daugher's body, but then you said that the one person who should be able to make the decision (the girl herself) isn't old enough to make such a decision. So what, the girl should sit in a darkened room until she hits 18 and apparantly is old enough to decide what to do with her body?

Not that I'm saying that the girl being photographed is right, or wrong for that matter. Many decisions would have had to been made before that, and I'm sure it wasn't quite just the girl in the room with the photographer. One of her parents, or a gaurdian or something would have to have been in the room whilst the photos were being taken.

[Wolfe Tone]

I have to disagree with you rebm. I think providing there was parental consent and the parent's were there to supivise the whole process, so that at no point is it just an older man and a thirteen year old girl, as well as the fact, that has been accepted and displayed in an art gallery, not used primarilly as sexual thing, then it should be allowed

Whether it is illegal is a different thing, and that is something for a judge to decide.

At this point I would also like to raise the idea of a thesis that my old boarding master wrote (one of a few good ones I've had in three years of boarding) on the lie of innocence.

He argues that people who claim to protect the inocent are usually the ones who are perfectly happy to abuse it in circumstances that will give them favour.

For example the same people that argue they are protecting this girl, often are the ones advocating things like the war in Iraq, where hundreds of children die each day.

If anyone would like to bore themselves silly, here is a summary of the thesis.

http://www.doubledialogues.com/archive/issue_eight/lecudennec.html

[Lord Biscuit©]

It's clearly not child pornography, and saying so is just being sensationalist and watering down what real child pornography really is.

However, this does not necessarily mean that the pictures are acceptable in a public forum. Artists are often pushing the limiits of what the general public regard as  decent and ethical. Of course, the ethical goal posts are always on the move, so it's not so easy to define a limit in law. Howeber, we kind of expect people and artists to be able to self-regulate.

the only major problem I see with this whole affair is that the media have decided to put this guy on trial, using emotive terms like 'child pornogrphy', which is clearly completely untrue.

[Thaluikhain]

That a point, they are detracting from the seriousness of child pornography, but that's teh media for you

He argues that people who claim to protect the inocent are usually the ones who are perfectly happy to abuse it in circumstances that will give them favour.

Well, often, maybe not usually, but yeah.

For example the same people that argue they are protecting this girl, often are the ones advocating things like the war in Iraq, where hundreds of children die each day.

Is this based on anything?

[Wolfe Tone]

It wasn't this particular issue he was commenting, I think he was talking about Howard's intervention into the Northern Territory, arguing that Howard presented himself as someone who was protecting innocent children but was perfectly prepared to commit troops to Iraq, a war that was clearly acumulating mass killings of innocents including children.

The idea still stands though, everyone has to be quick to denounce this act yet because it will not help them attain, hold or build up power, they have no need to comment on child prostitusion in Cambodia or the slaughter of innocent christians in Dafur.

[blue]

KEVIN Rudd's handpicked cultural advisers have confronted him over his attack on Melbourne artist Bill Henson and have warned that Henson's potential prosecution damages the nation's cultural reputation and risks "a repressive climate of hysterical condemnation".

That bit is a bit odd... so in the future the huge number of artists who exhibit naked pictures of juveniles will be too scared to do so? 

Not so long ago it used to be acceptable for people to have those photos of semi-naked children displayed in their homes (anyone remember them? Funny how you don't see them so much these days...). The last one I ever saw was in an op shop, and the friend who was with me mentioned that she always had to wonder about the kind of people who had that sort of thing in their homes. 

It's a bit of a slippery slope really... You don't want to set any sort of precedent that will make it easier for paedos to use the art excuse to avoid being charged.