There's an interesting post on Slog in defense of Edda and Klara, a photograph that generated some controversy in Britain. The image is voyeuristic, with a lighting and composition that appears very candid, and a tunnel-like vignetting that calls attention to the scene like a spotlight. Two small girls engage in play that is overtly sexual. One of them is naked, and in such a position, relative to the camera, that her physical privacy is entirely eliminated.
I wonder if they're embarrassed by this photo -- it's from 1998, so they'd be teens now. They're probably either mortified, or doing exactly the same thing.
Anyway. The post on Slog is very well-put, and addresses authorship and expression in a way in which anyone acquainted with the arts is probably already familiar.
I did get a bit hung up, though, on the writer's use of the word "innocent." I think she intends it to mean "meaningless," or "without symbolic relevance." The opening sentence of the post suggests that no photographic subject is "innocent," and I'm fairly sure I can agree with that. I looked through some of my recent pictures on Flickr, and all of them can be said to signify something. Even the ones that don't seem to indict the subject or viewer:
Or does she mean "innocent" to mean "without guile," or "without ulterior motive," or "without intent to mean anything," which is very different from being actually meaningless. Because then I think all of those above photos could (arguably) refute that point.
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