New storm over nude child picture 【Sydney Morning Herald 2008/07/07】
New storm over nude child picture – Arts – Entertainment – smh.com.au
New storm over nude child picture
Erik Jensen
July 7, 2008
THE Premier and the Prime Minister are again appalled, but a young girl photographed nude by her mother says the image, on the cover of the latest Arts Monthly Australia, is her favourite.
In the latest row over the depiction of nude children, Morris Iemma and the state Opposition Leader, Barry O’Farrell, are so offended by the nude pictures of a young girl they want the magazine that published them stripped of federal funding. Kevin Rudd said he could not stand them.
But the girl says the picture is her favourite image and still hangs in the house.
“She just enjoys it. It’s acting. She just loves it,” said the 11-year-old girl’s father, Robert Nelson. “Poli [Polixeni Papapetrou, the girl’s mother] wrote a doctoral thesis on this. It’s a highly researched body of work.”
The images, part of a practice in which Papapetrou works with her daughter, were reproduced in an edition of the magazine that explores the storm over the Bill Henson photographs that were to be shown in Sydney in May.
In scenes that mirrored the political response to Henson’s images of a nude 13-year-old, Mr Iemma described Ms Papapetrou’s pictures as a “cheap, sick stunt” and threatened to bar the magazine from future grants.
The Opposition Leader, Barry O’Farrell, called for a review of the funding the magazine received from the Australia Council. But the Australia Council, which prides itself on an arms-length approach to funding, will not review its grants unless the recipients are in breach of the law. The images will be referred to the classification board today but police have received no complaints.
The cover image shows the girl, who was then six, in front of a painted backdrop that refers to the work of Lewis Carroll.
Two more, which were removed from a photographic show in Gosford last year after complaints, show her at the age of four and wearing nothing but her grandmother’s jewellery. In one, perhaps the most provocative, she lies back with her arms behind her head and her legs folded.
“From memory, these were the works that she sought her mother to make. She said ‘Photo me. Photo me like this’,” Mr Nelson said. [His wife is recovering from surgery and is unable to comment.]
Mr Nelson, who as an art critic for The Age defended Henson, said the pictures of his daughter were not provocative.
“There were actually her instigation, her initiative, and her mother saw nothing wrong with making them. It’s not provocative – if anything, it’s about a girl who is contemplating her grandmother’s jewellery.”
The woman who led the campaign against Henson’s work, Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnson, said the pictures were an adult fantasy and called again for artistic licence to be removed from laws on the depiction of children. “This is manufactured by adults for the pleasure of adults, the financial benefit of adults, whatever it is. This is an adult desire being projected on to children.”
The magazine editor, Maurice O’Riordan, could not be contacted for comment yesterday but defended his position in a pre-emptive editorial, saying the work might be seen as controversial but was intended to restore dignity to the debate and remove “fear-mongering and repression” from the imagination.