Here we go again. Just one ill-informed complaint and the director of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale has been pressured to remove this Jan Saudek photo (see The Age and ABC).
Black Sheep and White Crow
According to the lone complainant this photo represents a mother offering her daughter as a child prostitute and the image has been styled to imitate the hand tinting of early erotica.
The first thing to say is that hand tinting is not the preserve of early erotica. It was applied to every genre (including family portraiture). The second thing to say is that the fact that the complainant sees this as intending to depict child prostitution only tells us about the complainant’s personal obsessions, not the intent of the photographer or how others might interpret it. Why should the misguided interpretation of just one complainant deprive others of their own interpretation?
But it is not the ignorance of the complainant that is the problem. Such complaints are common. The real problem is that a representative from the Office of the Child Safety Commissioner (and why was it a concern of this office? – the photo was taken in 1995 and the ‘child’ concerned is now an adult of around 24-25) and Tourism Victoria decided to act on a single complaint. It is especially shocking for Tourism Victoria to threaten the biennale’s director with a funding cut. Victoria prides itself on being a prime destination for tourists interested in the arts. This is just embarrassing. How can we be a state that promotes the arts but then over-reacts due to a single, ill-informed complaint?
Jan Saudek is an internationally renowned photographer. It is entirely appropriate for him to be represented at such an event. Frankly the State of Victoria now looks like the State of morally panicked Philistines.
Like most photographers Saudek primarily works with adults but has included a few child nudes over his long career (spanning at least 50 years).
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A work in progress – and something completely different. A crime novel about cultural and generational clashes. A series of murders in the Melbourne art world. 
Greenfields Site.
I think it is possible to “read” a photograph — hmm, translate it from analog to digital, from symbolic to prosaic. The complainant at the BIFB (deliberately? recklessly?) misread “Black Sheep & White Crow.” It would be nice if we didn’t have to, but we ought to be able to say what the thing actually says and have that end it. BS&WC’s adult does seem to be presenting or introducing the child to us, but I don’t see anything that says I, the viewer, am a sexual consumer. What I take away from this picture is more like what I do from the view of the adult walking two naked children through a grimly industrial landscape. It’s a dangerous world, children are vulnerable, and BS&WC is telling me I have a responsibility.
The mistake made by the complainant was to assume that there is one correct, objective reading of the photo – theirs. The mistake of the authorities was to run scared of the type of public outrage that surrounded the Henson photo. Both reactions are antithetical to artistic freedom.
I just sold a Jan Saudek book recently; his work has been familiar to me ever since I first saw one of his photos (the one with the mother walking with her nude children) on the cover of Soul Asylum’s album Grave Dancer’s Union (an excellent album, by the way) when I was in my early 20s. An interesting factoid: the video for one of the songs off the album, “Runaway Train,” featured images of actual runaway kids and was critical in actually reuniting some of the families. Along with the runaway theme, the video also deals with child abuse, which often leads to kids running away and, often as not, being vulnerable to sexual predators and child prostitution. How’s that for irony?
In fact, the picture “Black Sheep, White Crow” was featured on the album of another band, though one not nearly as well known as Soul Asylum: Anorexia Nervosa, the album being New Obscurantis Order. I always found it interesting that Saudek, who has been around forever, seemed to have escaped the controversy that so many other photographers of nude children have contended with. That is, until now, I guess.
It seems to be a small controversy. Many news outlets have not mentioned it. The curious thing is that both the Office of Child Protection and Tourism Victoria are out of step with the current premier of Victoria, who has spoken in support of Bill Henson. This all goes to show how parochial some of these issues are. That’s why it’s so embarrassing.
I would also like to add that, even if the suggestion the artist was going for in “Black Sheep & White Crow” was a mother offering her daughter for sexual favors, that doesn’t in itself qualify the work as pornography. Personally I feel that Saudek’s work intentionally straddles the line of obscurity: in essence, I think he wants us to think about these issues more critically, to consider what it is we consider eroticism vs. obscenity, whether the subject is child or adult. In examining the body of his work, you get the feeling he is going for an element of danger, but he’s not doing it for titillation. One really needs to consider his work in toto to understand it fully, I think.
Pip, if it’s “a mother offering her daughter for sexual favors” that does violate Australian laws that say nudity “in a sexual context” is illegal. The girl bares her nipple, and that’s often enough to trigger a prosecution in that country.
In Saudek’s country, the Czech Republic, nudity of all sorts at all ages is legal to depict, according to a ruling by the Czech Supreme Court in the middle of the last decade.
Walker,
That’s not quite correct. Any photo may trigger a ‘complaint’ but not enough to trigger a ‘prosecution’. In the Henson case the Department of Public Prosecutions declared the full frontal nudity of the subject was not in a sexual context and the Film and Literature Classification board gave it a very low rating of PG. The Saudek photo has since been reproduced in major newspapers without issue. The basic problem is a very vocal minority who want to define any image of a naked child as pornographic. It is NOT what the law says. What this case is about is state authorities fearing a public outcry. No one has said the photo is illegal in any way.
That’s a well reasoned article which I endorse. I’ve just written off angry complaints to Tourism Victoria and The Office of Child Safety. I would like to know how the law functions that one person out of 4 million decides what I see.
An interesting aspect of this is that the woman in the photograph is in Victoria now, the wife of Jan Saudek. Did the complainants speak to her about her interpretation, since she helped make it?
Hi Greg,
From what I can gather it was none of the OCS’s business. I checked their website and could not see that censoring works of art were part of their mandate. It might be their business if the child concerned was ‘currently’ being exploited. In any case their mandate clearly states they must also listen to and empower children and it is clear they did not speak to the model at all. So there may be a case to be made that the officer concerned acted outside their authority. Sadly I rather suspect the matter will be dropped.