Abigail Bray (3): Silencing the Subject

Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard. Hélène Cixous

For a feminist this is the worst betrayal of all. Feminism is supposed to empower women and girls. Yet in adopting the paedophiliac gaze she does what all paedophiles do: silences the subject.

In the previous post I asked if Abigail had spoken to Henson. More importantly. Has she spoken to the model in the photograph? What does the model think of Abigail’s interpretation?

In the US trial of British artist Graham Ovenden one of his model’s defended him (leading to his acquittal).

The portrait which the United States has charged as indecent is a portrait of me as I was eight years ago. I am not acting in a sexual way in the picture and Graham never asked me to sexual or treated me as a sexual object. The accusation that the image is “obscene” is, to me, an accusation that I am ‘obscene,’ something to which I take offense.

In her novel The Effects of Light Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, who, along with her younger sister Kai, posed for Jock Sturges, passionately defends the photos (Ruth is a fictionalised photographer).

I know you disagree with Ruth’s photographs. But the self that’s in them is the self I want you to know. I just realized that. The self that is in those photographs is the honest, real me. It’s who I am. I don’t know how to know you if you don’t understand that person. (pg 255)

But you see it. She is brave. You see it. She does this because it matters to her. Making this art is the thing that has made her know, more than anything else, who she is. (pg 264).

In her recent essay The Sapphic Displeasure of Proust, Jessie Mann, daughter of photographer Sally Mann says:

The eroticized female gaze, the lesbian, the returned stare of the self-aware nude, the women that want and are also wanted—these are beyond our powers of description, beyond understanding, beyond containment.

All of these articulate women posed nude as children in images far more explicit than the recently controversial Henson photo. They are women now and they still defend the photos. They want people to see them. They are not concerned about the paedophilic gaze. In fact Miranda and Kai have made it clear the only real threat they felt came from zealots seeking to protect them from paedophiles.

The context is important. Miranda and Kai have been raised as naturists. The photographer Mona Kuhn has captured them at play with their friends.