Are we tainting art with our own dark guilty fears?

At the beginning of this month, police in Northumbria seized a photograph from the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art before it was due to be exhibited, on the grounds that it possibly contravened Britain's child pornography laws.

The picture is owned by Sir Elton John and called Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing. It was taken by the celebrated American photographer Nan Goldin as part of a collection of works that have been exhibited all over the world without comment. The picture shows two young girls dancing, one standing over the other with her legs apart and the other child naked on the carpet. Both children are clearly caught in a moment of childlike delight.



Nan Goldin

The objections to the picture are the usual ones. First that the standing girl has her legs apart - reasonable I would have thought if you are standing astride another - but the Witchfinder Generals of the 'lets seek out paedophilia wherever we can find it' lobby see this as a posed sexual posture. The lower child has no clothes on and her genitals are visible. Like no one has ever seen a child's genitals when it runs around naked on a beach...as frequently happens..and no one in bygone years has cared a toss.

Visitors to the gallery - and viewers of the BBC news - were shown the picture yesterday - with the lower child's genitals suitably covered of course - and nearly all of them said they couldn't see anything pornographic about the picture, though a couple did say that if it was their children they would be a little uncomfortable about the picture being on public display. But that's different. Sure its important to get the permission of the parents before any pictures of children are shown to the public and I'm sure Ms Goldin did that as part of her commission.

But thats not the issue. We are now saying that pictures of children caught in play where their gyrations might appear to SOME adults to simulate sexual posturing constitute child pornography in the repressive backwater that the United Kingdom is becoming.

The police statement said 'The picture could appeal to paedophiles'. Well if that is to be the criterion adopted for prosecutions then I suggest that a message is immediately sent out to all snappers of baby photographs, all beach photographers, all mail order catalogue distributors etc to withdraw any photographs of children that might excite any one person at any one time - and of course that would be all photographs of children.

Michele Elliot, the director of 'Kidscape' was on record saying that the picture had to fall within the scope of prosecution because the children 'could not give consent'. Consent to what? Presumably being photographed in a 'sexually provocative posture'. But its only sexually provocative if the mind of the adult viewer sees it that way..and is Ms Elliot suggesting that all photographs of children have to be carefully staged to satisfy the prude lobby? I am beginning to believe that the likes of Ms Elliot are becoming tainted in their judgment by the hideous circumstances of some children with which they have to deal every day. Rather a case of 'When you work in a sewer you tend to smell shit everywhere you go'. It's understandable but it doesn't contribute to a positive and objective analysis.

There is no doubt that children deserve to be sensibly protected but are we not going through a terrible dark age in terms of our fear of paedophila to such an extent that it is becoming totally irrational? It is not for nothing that this obsession with seeking it out under every stone has been termed 'the new witchcraft'. Many of the stances taken remind me of the old joke about the guy sent to the psychiatrist because he was sex obsessed. The psychiatrist draws squiggles, loops and circles and asks the guy what they remind him of and to each he says 'sex'. When told he has an unhealthy sexual obsession, the guy replies indignantly, 'Me? It's YOU who keeps drawing all the dirty pictures!'...and thats how I see some of the well intentioned but to me sadly misguided people who take critical stances of photographs like this.

I can only hope that someday soon the hysteria and the ballyhoo surrounding this subject will drop to a reasonable and rational level, that the public will find some new moral outrage to obsess them, that the very necessary child protection agencies will be able to do their job free of this heavy cloud of panic and paranoia, that people like Michele Elliot will get on with doing the job I'm sure she does excellently, that of protecting vulnerable children, and not allowing her obsessions with child abuse to make her the knee-jerk media mouthpiece on this issue ...and that photographs like Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing
can be assessed honestly and openly on their merits as works of art.