News: Tate Modern removes naked Brooke Shields picture

[Cem_Usakligil]

I just read this news in Guardian:

Tate Modern removes naked Brooke Shields picture after police visit

Gallery takes down photo of actor when she was 10, made-up and nude, after advice from Met's obscene publications squad

A display due to go on show to the public at Tate Modern tomorrow has been withdrawn after a warning from Scotland Yard that the naked image of actor Brooke Shields aged 10 and heavily made up could break obscenity laws.

The work, by American artist Richard Prince and entitled Spiritual America, was due to be part of the London gallery's new Pop Life exhibition . It has been removed from display after a visit to Tate Modern by officers from the obscene publications unit of the Metropolitan police....

The rest of the article is here.

So what do you think? I am undecided as of yet and need to think it through...

 

[Charles L Webster]

The movie she appeared in nude when she was ?15? "Pretty Baby" is not available any more either.

Revisionism

 

[Michael Fontana]

Are the cops becoming curators?
Or the brits rather victorian?

Isn' it silly? That same image has been shown as well in that Playboy magazine and exhibitions; I remember havingt it seen in in art magazines, years ago....

Lucky owner, its prise will rise like a skyscraper.
At the end of the day, she might buy it...

http://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/482f568a9b7e9_normal.jpg

EDIT CU: I have changed the image into an URL link which can be visited by those who wish to do so. I haven't done this only because the image is controversial but also because you haven't provided any explicit references to where this picture comes from or what the owner's copyrights are. Of course we can post pictures here for editorial purposes. But let's be prudent in the meantime.

 

[Michael Fontana]

okay Cem, if that makes your life easier - still the ones who want can see it...
I understand the copyright question.

My intention has been to have the ability to look at the photo in question, and not talking about a unseen image.

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

okay Cem, if that makes your life easier - still the ones who want can see it...
I understand the copyright question.

My intention has been to have the ability to look at the photo in question, and not talking about a unseen image.

Agreed, we should know what we are talking about. But if some others don't want to see it, they have a choice this way.

Cheers,

 

[Michael Fontana]

well done Cem

I personally don't find that image a scandal; I read it more in the way that Prince is showing the entire orchestration, staging of pinup, Lolita and all that stuff. Look at the knickknack in that photo. The young girl beeing rather the hook for that orchestration.

If we wouldn't know the girl's name today, nobody would care, as every 10 years old boy and girl nows how to find more extreme stuff in the internet, with ease.

 

[Asher Kelman]

The censorship of Prince's Spiritual America * supports his rehetoric on commoditization of women. We are different from traditional civilizations just in our expression. In older societies it's hard core discipline. Women may be subjected to mutilation, restricted rights, forced marriages, disfugurement or death for slights to cultural norms. In Western Societies, instead, sexuaiization of girls and young women to promote the cycles of consumerism and fashion. It's perhaps self-worth that's mutilated, perhaps not.

Prince effectively holds a mirror to what we do. Commodization of women in one way or another is probably just a feature of apes, even those with crackberries and 3G iPods!

Asher

*,(repurposing of the original photograph by Gary Gross, in a new context),

 

[fahim mohammed]

I am wondering what type of parents ( guardians ) would allow a picture such as this one of their child/ward to be exhibited in public, or in private for that matter.?

 

[Mike Shimwell]

I am wondering what type of parents ( guardians ) would allow a picture such as this one of their child/ward to be exhibited in public, or in private for that matter.?

Exactly - Whilst I have some pictures of my children unclothed, they are not sexual, not for display in any case and not made up. Exploitation?

Mike

 

[Asher Kelman]

In the USA, never take your family pictures with grandkids playing in the bath. Two incidents: the first a Grandmother was arrested at the store (think it was Walmart, not sure) and lost all her savings and was put into poverty fighting child pornography charges! Next a couple recently had their children taken away for moths to a foster home and they were put on the sex offenders lest. Now they're suing, but they have so much trauma. So people take it upon themselves to be the "moral police" and can do so much damage to folks.

In the case of Brookes Shield, her mother received a fee for the picture and it was done for a Playboy owned magazine. Is that exploitation? For sure! However, is it immoral? Each has to judge it. We wouldn't allow it in our family. Many times we were aked is our kids could be photgraphed for perfectly civil ads and we declined. This, however is artistic and nude. Is it wrong? Obvious arguments against doing it can be conjured up.

Still, I don't feel it should be removed from a gallery. It's value is greater than it's history and no one, AFAIK was harmed.

Asher

 

[Rachel Foster]

A 10-year-old sexualized? No way. Period. It's porn. I can be very broad-minded, but ten is a child. Forget it. No way.

 

[Asher Kelman]

A 10-year-old sexualized? No way. Period. It's porn. I can be very broad-minded, but ten is a child. Forget it. No way.

Rachel,

Different societies have customs that wouldn't work in other places. Values aren't necessarily universal or even cross culturally consistent. In some societies, girls are married off even before puberty. Others are bartered with an agreement while yet infants.

The pageants all over the north American continent for children of 5-10 years old are definitely sexualized as the kids are given adult make up, clothes and trained to walk, dance and sing as if sexually active and available adults trying to seduce men. Paradoxically, the parents can be the pillars of society, involved in their Church and feel they support so called, "family values". Actually they seem to be pimping their minor children. In some strands of the US culture, Irish Travelers have events in which the girls and boys are paraded as if they were in one of these fashion pageants and arrangements might be made for future marriage.

Jock Sturgis shoots nude girls from infancy to teenage years and their own marriage and motherhood. So we have a large range of variability of attitude towards girls, nudity, pageants and the like. Photography should look at this as any other form of our lives.

The only issue is one of damage and humiliation. If that's present, the picture is immoral. Otherwise, it's a matter of community conscience and the law. The photographer has to keep all these things in mind, but first, the child has to be respected and not sexually or emotional exploited. If one can take pictures, with parental consent, without going against the principles I've offered, and it does not break the law, it seems fine by me, no matter what the age.

However, there's a huge burden on one to really make sure pictures, themselves, are not used for child pornography. So there's the final challenge!

Asher

 

[Rachel Foster]

But Asher, this is a Western child in Western culture. And "damage and humiliation?" Damage and humiliation to whom? Just the model? Nope. Do we really want to promote children as sexually appropriate objects? No. No. No. No.

 

[Asher Kelman]

But Asher, this is a Western child in Western culture. And "damage and humiliation?" Damage and humiliation to whom? Just the model? Nope. Do we really want to promote children as sexually appropriate objects? No. No. No. No.

Perhaps having the picture in the gallery does serve your own feelings more than any exploitation by bringing the subject forward to public attention.

 

[Rachel Foster]

I understand your point, but I don't agree.

Also, I have to return to this: "Different societies have customs that wouldn't work in other places. Values aren't necessarily universal or even cross culturally consistent. In some societies, girls are married off even before puberty. Others are bartered with an agreement while yet infants."

I seriously doubt you mean to say these things are ok simply because they are practiced in other cultures. Some things are just wrong. Relativism has its limits too. After all, that argument could be used to justify female genital mutilation.

 

[Michael Fontana]

Does anybody seriously pretends, that censoring a exhibition does anything against real porn?

In the end, it 's just serving as a fig leaf - see, we're morally clean - to get us confused between a °symbolic° and the real thing and pump even more of that stuff in the internet - or in baywatch, if you like that better....

Should
L' origine du Monde by Gustave Courbet, dating 1866 and beeing in the"Musée d'Orsay", in Paris, been taken out of public for that duty as well? We might need to go to the caverns of Lascaux and check....

I can understand that we' re facing a sexualized society - beating art for it seems to me to be the wrong reply; it's not even one.

 

[Rachel Foster]

Do you consider that "art?" Why? And how is a sexualized naked 10 year old child not porn?

Ah, me, I think I've said enough. No way, no how, no. Nope.

 

[Michael Fontana]

Yes, Rachel, it's art:

it doesn't matter if you or me we like it - or if it fits our taste, or moral standarts (which can be highly biased) - it's art because a artist made it and it's shown, seen und discussed within the context of art - in galleries, musems, and art magazines.

That's a pretty basic definition of art, but it works:

if ya need a proof - as we are already talking about that image since a good while - would we do that with just one image of a major industrie, witch created in 2006 in the United States of America every 39 minutes a new pornographic video?

You should not forget that Prince has been working on that image, it's not in the original context, size, and correct me if I'm wrong, color, etc anymore.

 

[Rich Beaubien]

The previous poster of the one photo pulled it off the Iconic Photos blog, which is well worth reading.

You can read the entire posting Brooke Shields by Gary Gross, (no really, that is his name) along with many comments which are echoed in the discussion here. Just be aware this posting contains the photos but it also contains a bit more of the story.

For me I have a torn relationship with these sorts of photos (though I generally do not take photos of children when shooting "on the street") and am a fence straddler on this which tears at me a bit.

--Rich

 

[Christoph Grabmayr]

Another fence-sitter here.
The picture and the discusion in this thread open many questions. On the nature of art, on personal standards, on what the prevailing attitude of the time accepts, the intention of the artist...
I find the points raised in the discussion up to now very interesting, as this forum provides a very high level of discourse.

I remember photographers, whose portfolios were printed in mainstream photographic magazines in the 80's, who would be considered very controversial now:
David Hamilton and his soft-focus (soft-core?) girls,
Irina Ionesco and her pictures of her daughter,
Jock Sturges was already mentioned,
Bob Carlos Clarke and his pictures of prom parties, just to mention some.

Tongue firmly in cheek, and I hope not to offend anybody, I propose two links to reputable institutions exposing old images of a doubtful nature: First a naked child ogled over by old men with the connivance of its parents, who take payment for this (http://ftp.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bassano/adoration/); then the mass rape of the female mebers of a village by invading military (http://nga.gov.au/International/Catalogue/Detail.cfm?IRN=23215&ViewID=2&GalID=ALL). My description is obviously tendencious, but I think that all points I mentioned can be found in the pictures.


Do you think that the medium used has some relevance, painted in oil it is art, but as a photograph, it would be pornographic?
Is it venerable because it is old?
Does the artist's intentions count? Even if the execution is incompetent?
On the other hand, makes technical competence the content less objectionable?

What brought me to add tardively to this thread was something I just read: Groups in the UK consider the use of the new "nude scanners" at airports on minors illegal under child pornography legislation.

Best regards and thanks for bearing with me
Christoph

 

[Michael Fontana]

............
I remember photographers, whose portfolios were printed in mainstream photographic magazines in the 80's, who would be considered very controversial now:
David Hamilton and his soft-focus (soft-core?) girls,
Irina Ionesco and her pictures of her daughter,
Jock Sturges was already mentioned,
Bob Carlos Clarke and his pictures of prom parties, just to mention some.
Christoph

This reminds me a interview of the director of the swiss photo museum from last year, while having a exhibition of erotic photography from more than 100 years. The interview has the title:
" we show the opposite of pornography" and in the interview, he states: "Interestingly enough there are pictures, which one could show 20 years ago without problem, today no more. ..."