The Decisive Moment

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of months you will have undoubtedly heard about the controversy surrounding one of the pictures in a recent exhibition of Nan Goldin’s work.

For obvious reasons we can’t show the photo here but for those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s a picture of two young girls belly dancing; one of them is naked and in what could be considered a compromising position.

The photograph, Klare and Edda belly-dancing, was taken away by police on September 20th due to concerns that it might breach child pornography laws.

Firstly, please understand that I (and everyone at TDM) certainly believe that the matter of child pornography should be taken very seriously and I don’t believe that there can ever be a severe enough punishment for these kinds of offences, but when did we, as a society, completely lose all common sense? Whilst I understand that we need to protect children from abuse and exploitation, I don’t understand how anyone who has actually seen the photograph could see anything pornographic about it, or even feel the need to question it’s validity in relation to the law. When did we forget that nudity doesn’t mean pornography? And when did we decide that it was a good idea to turn a common depiction of the innocence of youth into something sinister?

Throughout history there have been countless occurrences in art of all genres of nude children. Some of the most famous pieces of work created by the old masters contain nude children. Why is this any different? Surely any “normal” person would take one look at the piece and realise that there is nothing sinister about the photograph?

Right, everybody close your eyes. Now think back. As a child did you at any point run about, playing, doing silly things without your clothes on. If you did, put your hand up. Now open your eyes. Yup I thought so. It wasn’t that uncommon a thing was it. How many of your parents have a photo of you like that. You know that photo that your mum always gets out and shows your significant other the first time you take them home to meet your parents. I thought so. Now, it could be argued that that isn’t the kind of photo you really want to display in an art gallery, but except for the embarrassment it would cause is there really anything wrong with that?

If the photo wasn’t clearly the type of photo above then I absolutely agree it should have been removed. If it had been removed just in case a paedophile should see it then that would at least make some sense, but to potentially brand a piece of art like this as paedophilic and then in turn brand the photographer as a paedophile is moronic at best.

Personally, I’m not a fan of Goldin’s work. I can’t say that I particularly care for the photograph in question either, but I believe it’s important that as photographers we support one and other’s right to be creative. Furthermore I think it’s our duty as humans to support our society’s values but also to remember that common sense should prevail over political correctness and that we shouldn’t live in a society where we are afraid to go about normal daily life because of a minority who would cause trouble because of it. After all, isn’t that what the fight against terrorism is all about?

This is obviously a potentially controversial subject and there must be other important points of view to consider. What do you have to say on the subject?

An old friend of mine visited TDM yesterday and imparted some of his experience regarding my wedding photography fears. I gave him a call to find out what he had been up to lately and he told me a little bit about the safaris he has been organizing. As you can see from the picture of the leopard cub inside a carcass, it has been a fruitful exercise!

In spite of being incredibly busy at the moment, Tony has agreed to set aside a little time to write a couple of articles for us, including his experiences as a wedding photographer, his journey from amateur to professional photographer and his trips to exotic locations to photograph the wildlife.

For those of us who like to know such things, the technical info of the leopard shot looks like this:

• Location: Samburu, Kenya
• Camera: Canon 20D
• Lens: 70-200 F2.8 with a Canon 1.4x converter
• Exposure: 1/125s @ f6.3
• Raw file processed with CS2

I’ve been using Canon digital kit for ages and yet I’ve only just come across this. Hopefully you’ll find it as interesting as I do:

http://www.usa.canon.com/content/eos_guidebook/index.html

This is one of those “just do it” moments. We (that’s me and my buddy, Charlie) have been talking about doing this for many months but one day last week we decided to get on with it and so here we are.

What we wanted was a place to talk about photography like we do when we get together. We have those conversations where you get all fired up because it really matters to you. I don’t think you really get that from traditional magazines and we really hope that we might find a few other photographers out there who know what we mean and feel the same way.

If you are still seeing this post on the first page then I guess you have probably stumbled upon us by accident or we have pushed this in front of you (or maybe Charlie knows more about SEO than I give him credit for!).

If you are passionate about photography, stick with us, because so are we.