Art or Child Pornography? - Comments

I know art. I DO art.
This is anywere nearly art.
This is very wrong.
Come onn! A child naked? Its not right. They dont even know what they are doing!
Im against it!

i say sick porn
especially the 6 year old!
she doesnt even know whats going on.

i would hate to be 1 of those kids that got photographed. that would be so embarassing!!

I agree with Twigg Violence's comment 100%

Also, in the age we live in, we exploit our children by parading them around in heels, short skirts, bikinis and bras, some children being younger than 10. What Bill is saying is exactly what his opponents have been saying: where do we draw the line?

I'm all for Henson's work. I admire him as an artist; he's the Sex Pistols of the art world, he's making a statement about society.
I think the reaction to his photographs are exactly what he was aiming for. People have begun to ponder the maning of art; is it porn, or an artistic statement?
I would personally be all for my children being photographed. I'm underage, and I would let myself be photographed for art.
What he did was an amazing statement.

[i]Life has no meaning.
Us beings inhabiting these grounds are in denial.
In the end,
Art is here to mock life...
And it's utter meaninglessness.[/i]

It's nothing more than just art. These photographs were under the consent of both the child and their parents.

Kidders these days can't find a cause to riot over, and they choose the most easiest one to pick and bicker over.
We all just need to mind our own business.
It's not like the children are having sex. Trust me when I say this! These photographs are not as bad as the Japanese's lolicon.

And don't compare [i]this[/i] to sick pedophiles and rapists who KIDNAP children, rapes them raw, and post their nude and disgusting pictures on the Internet.
THAT is NOT art!

C'mon guys, this is just a scare thing. Kiddie porn? Not likely.

Bill Henson seems to have copped all the shit here, but when we boil it down to the roots, its just a celebration of sorts of the human body. Dear god, does saying THAT make me a pedo? No. Fact is that pedophiles aren't everywhere, they're not as common as Law and Order make them out to be, and although they might exist i hardly say they exist in numbers near enough to be scared about them doing nasty things over an artwork.
As for the art side, i agree to an extent that the child may or may not have the mental capability to make an informed decision about whether they want to effectively donate their body to art. i DONT see both sides of the argument, i see paranoid sicko's with dirty minds of their own laying down their own version of the law in response to overwhelming media rating-winners. Media products, that aren't designed to show truth, aren't designed to do anything but attract viewers.
Money mightn't make the world go round, but it makes the media industry lie. So (with no pun intended), i say to all the critics out there disgusted by the commemoration of a beautiful human body, [b]Harden Up[/b]

I don't think it's right. The children are most likely going to regret this as they get older. The decision-making part of a human's brain isn't fully developed until they hit adulthood. These children have just made really stupid decisions and even though some might argue that they are teenagers, they practically aren't. This is horrible and I don't believe in it.

I agree with XxLithiumLilyxX.
Though it's still a child.
I know most pedophiles like children because of the innocence and virtue and all that.
But it's still a shivering thought.
I wouldn't want my kid having nude pictures taken of them for art.
I totally understand if other people don't mind it.
It's their opinion.

there's a difference between child pornography and this
this is a piece of art
i say so because both the child and the parent consented, and it doesn't make sense for the police to take the picture unless one of the children or their parents changed their mind and didn't want the pictures shown
if that was the case, i'm sure that the artist would understand anyway, and there needn't be this big controversy over a gallery showing

There is nothing bad about the human body, and the artist had the child and parent's consent to do what he did. It's just fine.

WTF!
Yes, The body is infact a work of art, but showing a child NAKED?
NO! That fucking perverted bastard!
It's sick.

When I first saw the picture I thought "Thats sick!" and thought it was child pornography. I can see both sides of the arguement but I think its wrong, they're kids, they shouldn't be posing nude because that could show younger kids its alright, kind of like the Hannah Montana arguement going on.

I can see both points. It generally seems like the photographer made no intention of making the photo seem sexual, but still, I don't find it appropriate to be photographing kids this way. The human body is a beautiful thing, but couldn't this also take away from the fact that the mind of someone can be beautiful as well? Art pushes boundaries and sometimes forces people to see the truth and beauty of it all, but this one confuses me. I feel like there's more ways you could portray the innocence of a child, that's all.

I really have no idea what side I would be on if I HAD to choose....

On one hand, if people agree this is just art, that might give the real pedophiles ideas. They'll get their pictures of innocent little girls who had their dignity taken from them, post them on the Internet for all the other perverts to see, and then tell the police that it was just art. This may give them they idea and opportunity to do it.

On the other hand, I do see the symbolism in his photographs. Children are fragile, innocent, and pure. How else is a better way to show that? Dressing them in white? Overrated and cliche. Plus, the media have been doing things way worse. You see all these so-called beautiful girls that prance around thinking they're good role-models, but then they do stupid things or have plastic surgery. Then there are all these parents that say this is pornography but then they'll enter their little girl into a beauty pageant and make her wear more make-up then a 30 year old and stupid little dresses. Some of the parents go so far as to have their children's teeth whitened, or removed for caps, and even have a rib REMOVED just so they look curvier.

Seriously?....
Makes you think...which one sounds worse?

I totally agree with both the comments below. Hannah Montana has my sister dressing in the tight shirts and short skirts with heels. She thinks she looks famous, but I've seen older guys looking at her and she's only eight.

T.V programs are doing the same thing and a lot of them are worse than this. The art portrayed on in the article is no more sexual than the kids programs shown today. and to those links, those are quite bad.

A big round of applause to binxx_narly. :D

If anyone is interested in reading more about this, there is a lengthy article in the August issue of Rolling Stone which is in depth and well thought out. It points out quite correctly that the media has been sexuallising children for years to sell their products. Examples are teen stars such as Hannah Montana, who even before her somewhat questionable photo shoot for Vanity Fair were still sexuallised, and Britney Spears, whose image was constructed as a modern-day Lolita for middle aged men to fantasise about (remember the little naughty school-girl outfit?).

To me, what the media has portrayed children as is a lot more sexual then this photograph. So maybe instead of all this fuss and hoo-hah over a piece of controversial artwork (and hell, art has always been controversial, what with all the freedom and liberty it is supposed to encourage) we should instead focus on stopping children getting sexuallised in our magazines and TV programs.

look, i knew of henson's work for ages before this all happened. what people dont realise is that he's been doing these works for years before people started to chuck hissies.
my sister who's a photographer studied and replicated his works using ME, but i wasnt in fully naked. Its supposed to show a fragility and exposability of children these days.
i mean, come on! our society is so obsessed with paedophilia! And they're looking at all the wrong reasons for this.
I think paedophiles will get more sexual stimulation by looking at models in runway shows who are only fourteen, little girls who's parents put them in pageants and make them wear whoreish makeup and even dolls little girls play with and childrens clothes in catalogues. I mean, take a look at this and tell me hensons works are sexualising children.
-copy and paste into your html bar

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-559046/14-year-old-Polish-model-banned-catwalk-row-sexualising-young-girls.html

http://photobucket.com/images/pageants/?page=2

http://www.weneedtostop.com/HOD.jpg

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42187000/jpg/_42187482_bling300.jpg

Ah. I've had discussions about this with my parents and my drama class... And really, I do not see it as "pornography". My reasons?

As Gabster said below, these pictures do not seem to be designed to sexually stimulating. Is the young girl spread on a table with her legs wide open, giving wide-eyed come-hither looks? No. From what little I've seen of pornography, the person in question is usually in some sort of appealing stance or gives out some kind of sexual vibe. This picture is just of a naked teen, standing quite demerely appropriately covering her genitals. Besides- why all this uproar over a [i]teenager[/i]? Let's face it, in today's society teenagers are encouraged to be overly sexual, so it is very easy to find pictures of naked teenagers without them being featured as a photography piece in an exhibition. Trust me... I learned that horrible lesson on photobucket....

Plus, naked children aren't exactly new to art. Maybe you've heard of Anne Geddes, who is famous for photographing naked infants. My mother has one of her books. Sure, the babies are naked, but it isn't slandered by the public and called "infantile pornography". Also, I'm pretty sure my mother isn't a peadophile. This is just one example. In my life so far, I have been blessed to visit many exhibits and see many different art forms. In the art I've seen, there has been a [b]multitude" of naked children. Sure, they're painted or sculpted rather then photographed, but it amounts to the same thing. Cherubs, particularily from the Ruebanesque period, were really just fat little flying naked children. Jesus Christ as a baby was usually portrayed naked too. And guess what? The genetalia was painted in and everything. At least in this picture, the genitals are covered up.

There are sickos everywhere in the world. Yes, probably some men or even women will look at this picture and see it as something sexual and arosing. But the majority of people won't. Have you ever heard the expression: "There's always a couple of rotten apples in the barrel"? Well, the world is just a giant barrel, with the murderers, rapists, peadophiles and whatnot being the bad apples. I don't see the point in comprimising the freedom of artistic expression just because of those few bad apples.