censorship of photography

This page considers the censorship of photography.

It covers -

• introduction
• illicit pleasure
• totalitarian regimes
• rectification of history?
• ownership of the image
• contemporary anxieties
• studies

It is supplemented by the discussion of photography as a communication medium and the more detailed note on unauthorised photography (inc paparazzi and street photos) elsewhere on this site.

     introduction

Is photography the "most democratic of the arts" (or merely one that most people can embrace, whether as a practitioner or as a consumer through exposure to photos in the home and at a distance in newspapers, magazines, books and on video)?

The ease with which the camera can capture reality ("the unblinking eye") or what is purportedly reality and with which photographs can be reproduced means that it has featured in debate over the past 150 years regarding -

• 'political' censorship (images that are deemed to subvert respect for dictators or other elites, disclose secrets such as the existence of military facilities or of famines)
• erotica (representations of stigmatised activity or merely images deemed unsuitable for members of the lower classes, minors and women)
• boundaries between 'art', 'smut' and 'sickness' (evident in contemporary anxieties in the UK, US and Australia regarding photographs of children)
• the acceptability of making and publishing photos of streets and other public places (explored in more detail here).

That debate has been reflected in a range of statute and common law (often inconsistent with the treatment of representations on canvas or in marble) and administrative action such as punishment of photographers and suppression of particular images, including use of customs officials to black out or remove offending images from current affairs magazines in states such as Singapore.

It has also provided an opportunity for advocates of various causes - the sacredness of art, the protection of children from evil, and so forth - to behave like dogs and yet again mark their territories through statements that affirm their virtue, rally supporters and gain attention of the media, policymakers and community.

     illicit pleasures

Anxieties about mass access to erotic images are older than the internet.

Lisa Sigel's Governing Pleasures: Pornography & Social Change in England, 1815-1914 (New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni Press 2002) and 'Filth in the Wrong People's Hands: Postcards & the Expansion of Pornography in the Britain & the Atlantic World, 1880-1914' in 33(2) Journal of Social History (2000) for example argue that new technologies and distribution mechanisms at the end of the nineteenth century resulted in a democratisation of erotica and an associated anxiety among government agencies and advocacy groups about suppression of the improper.

During the 1880s visual images in the form of cheap ephemera such as postcards outstripped older - and more expensive - text-based forms of pornography -

Class specific patterns of distribution and state repression placed early forms of pornography out of the hand of the working classes. High prices, low literacy rates, class-specific cultural referents, unequal patterns of state repression, production, and distribution patterns restricted the dispersal of pornography

New printing and photographic technologies allowed the working classes to become consumers rather than just objects of pornography. Sigel's analysis is consistent with broader conclusions in Mitchell Stephens' feisty The rise of the image the fall of the word (New York: Oxford Uni Press 1998), highlighted here.

Statistics on demand for improper images and responses by government agencies and nongovernment crusaders are problematical. Ronald Hyam's Empire & Sexuality (Manchester: Manchester Uni Press 1990) claims that around 250,000 'indecent' photographs were seized between 1863 - when the London Metropolitan Police Obscene Publications Squad was established - and 1880.

Other sources suggest that around 130,000 'obscene' photographs and 5,000 lantern slides were seized by police in an 1874 raid on the London premises of photographer Henry Hayler, whose journal has been edited by Bill Jay as 61 Pimlico (Tucson: Nazraeli Press 2000). Across the Atlantic around 194,000 "bad pictures and photographs" (along with 5,500 indecent playing cards) were seized by Anthony Comstock as Special Agent of the US Post Office in 1873-74 alone.

A century after Comstock the publishers of UK periodical Gay News were charged with obscenity over a cover photograph of two men kissing. Two decades on in Australia Helen Vnuk's Snatched: Sex & Censorship in Australia (Milsons Point: Random 2003) noted digital 'cosmetic surgery' on nudes in Australian magazines.

     totalitarian regimes

Totalitarian regimes, such as the USSR, Nazi Germany and contemporary China, seek to manage reality by managing the generation and reception of images.

As noted above that management encompasses restrictions on -

• what can be photographed (eg bans on photography of particular locations, people or events, including defence facilities, the residences of the elites, mass starvation or destitution, pollution, prisoners and demonstrations or other indications that subvert official assertions that all is well)
• how people and other entities can be photographed (eg exclusion of unauthorised photographers, bans on photography that captures elites at play or in unflattering ways)
• the dissemination of images, particularly on a mass and commercial basis.

Studies include Hitler's Face: The Biography of an Image (Philadelphia: Uni of Pennsylvania Press 2006) by Claudia Schmölders.

Liberal democratic regimes, such as Australia, of course place some restrictions on photographing particular locations (eg defence facilities) or in specific circumstances (eg court proceedings)

     the rectification of history

There has been no comprehensive longitudinal study of the political airbrush: doctoring paintings and photographs to remove evidence of past alliances or former colleagues.

David King's The Commissar Vanishes: the Falsification of Photographs & Art in Stalin's Russia (New York: Holt 1997) is one of the more eloquent demonstrations of the rectification of history. It is complemented by Charles Hedrick's History & Silence: Purge & Rehabilitation of Memory in Late Antiquity (Austin: Uni of Texas Press 2000).

     ownership of the image

In 2005, as discussed in a note elsewhere on this site regarding unauthorised taking and publication of photographs (particularly of minors), there were calls in Australia for civil or even criminal penalties for those who took streetphotos or put them online.

     contemporary anxieties

The visceral nature of photography - its representation of reality and its closeness to what might be found at home (in contrast to much avant-garde art) - means that it has become a focus of anxieties about heterodox sexual activity and about the exploitation of minors.

Much contemporary debate about censorship of photography (or perceived failure to censor) is arguably not about photography as such. Instead it is a maifestation of what might be glibly characterised as the 'culture wars', an opportunity for institutional legitimation and for disagreement about moral policing.

A focus for that debate has involved photos of minors, marked by outbreaks of moral panic regarding domestic snaps of toddlers (including seizure/destruction of innocuous photos in undeveloped film provided by mum or dad to a film developing service) and police visits to galleries exhibiting art that is claimed to breach child pornography statutes or otherwise improperly sexualise minors.

It is difficult to escape the impression that much of the brouhaha after such visits is disingenous, with overreaching claims by advocacy organisations (whose lust for a headline is greater than their effectiveness in addressing the reality of child abuse in Australia and overseas), fatuous responses by art critics and inept intervention by officials.

Intervention has typically been inept because it has been conducted in front of the glare of the cameras and because it has concerned images that are not much different from those readily available in books or in other exhibitions.

A cause celebre of 2000 was the South Australian police seizure from the Folio bookshop, an art specialist, of Pictures for Sale, a book of Mapplethorpe photos. The work was also available at the Art Gallery of South Australia's bookshop. In the following year the Saatchi gallery in London was "visited" by UK police and threatened with prosecution under the UK Protection of Children Act 1978 over Tierney Gearon's photographs of her young children, provoking responses that Gearon's work did not sexualise its subjects and was essentially no more offensive than a plethora of family happy snaps. (Broadcaster Julia Somerville had been threatened with prosecution under the Act in 1995 when family snaps of her children bathing at home were reported to the police by the pharmacist developing the film).

Australian artist Concetta Petrillo had been charged in 1995 with 'indecently recording a person under 13' (ie photographing her sons in classical poses), being acquitted in 2003 after two years of preliminary hearings. The prosecution is discussed in 1997 'Crossing The Fine Line: The case of Concetta Petrillo' by Alison Archer in 18(3) Artline (1997) and noted elsewhere on this site.

Mapplethorpe images had been the focus of controversy about arts funding in the US - discussed in 'Censorship and Subsidy in the Arts' by Arthur Danto in 47(1) Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993) 25­61 and Leaving Town Alive: Confessions of an Arts Warrior (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1993) by John Frohnmayer - and about self-censorship by London's Hayward Gallery to avoid action under the UK Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981.

In 2008 NSW police, after a 'raid' on a Bill Henson exhibition at the prestigious Roslyn Oxley9 gallery, announced that charges would be laid under both the NSW and Commonwealth Crimes Acts for publishing an indecent article. The announcement presumably provided the NSW government with a welcome distraction from a series of political misadventures.

The NSW action would apparently involve display of Henson's photos of young people (which reportedly were little different to those previously exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of NSW and National Gallery of Australia or in volumes readily available in mainstream bookshops and libraries) and associated promotional material. The Commonwealth action would relate to the online catalogue.

One proponent of censorship claimed, with traditional hyperbole, that "If this is not upheld by the court it will give a green light to pedophiles everywhere". In a mild episode of moral panic, marked by death threats to the artist and gallery operator, police visited public galleries in Melbourne, Newcastle and other locations to inspect Henson images. Online photos used by media websites in reporting the brouhaha were then referred to the national Classification Board.

The Board found that neither the online nor offline images were illegal, the seized material was returned to the gallery and the NSW Police accepted that prosecution would not proceed because there was no reasonable prospect of conviction.

Anxiety about images that pose questions about childhood is illustrated in works such as Victorian Erotic Photography (New York: St Martins Press 1973) edited by Peter Mendes & Graham Ovenden, 'The Last Taboo: Childhood Sexuality & Censorship' by Kyla & James Legard in 24(1) Blackflash (2006), Elisabeth Stoney's 1995 paper Alice Does: The Erotic Child Of Photography and Anne Higonnet's Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood (London: Thames & Hudson 1998).

In 2007 Swedish neoNazis trashed Andres Serrano's 'History of Sex' photography exhibition in Lund. A more provocative image by Serrano had been attacked as blasphemous in Melbourne in the preceding century.

     studies

Studies include 'Equal Protection In The World Of Art And Obscenity: The Art Photographer's Latent Struggle With Obscenity Standards In Contemporary America' by Elaine Wang in 9 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law (2006) 113-139, Culture Wars: Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts (New York: New Press 1992) by Richard Bolton, 'Eyes Wide Open, Minds Wide Shut: Art, Obscenity, and the First Amendment in Contemporary America' by Cara Newman in 53 DePaul Law Review (2003) 121-160, 'Morals Versus Art: Censorship, The Politics of Interpretation and the Victorian Nude' by Nicola Beisel in 58 American Sociological Review (1993) 145-162, 'The White Man's Burden: Gonzo Pornography And The Construction Of Black Masculinity' by Carol Dines in 18 Yale Journal of Law & Feminism (2006) 283-196, 'Reviving Lolita: A Media Literacy Examination of Sexual Portrayals of Girls in Fashion Advertising' by Debra Merskin, in 48(1) American Behavioral Scientist (2004) 119-29.

The Serrano incident in Australia is covered in Melissa Beauford's brief 'Court report' in 4 Art & Law (1997) 7-9 and in the cogent 'Pell v Council of Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria: Should Blasphemy be a Crime? The 'Piss Christ' Case and Freedom of Expression' by Bede Harris in 22 Melbourne University Law Review (1998) 217-229.

For broader studies of photography see Photography and Its Critics: A Cultural History, 1839-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) by Mary Marien, On Photography (London: Allen Lane 1977) by Susan Sontag, The Nude in Photography (Chicago: Ridge Press 1975) by Arthur Goldsmith, Art and Outrage: Provocation, Controversy and the Visual Arts (London: Pluto Press 1998) by John Walker, 'Obscenity in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' by Shayana Kadidal in 44 American Journal of Comparative Law (1996) 353-382, Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall (New York: Columbia Uni Press 1996) by Tom Waugh, The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the last 100 Years in the West (London: Routledge 1986) by Emmanuel Cooper, Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2002) by Richard Meyer and other works highlighted here.

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