levite

With respect, I just disagree that this is about shock value.

The first thing that leapt out at me when I saw the photos was the sense of vulnerability, the sense of intermingled nervousness, excitement, and tentativeness, conveyed not just by the expressions on the girl's face, but by her nakedness, by the lighting, the play of shadows. I thought it was really a rather evocative visceral reminder of how it felt to be that age. The same photo of a girl ten years older might have made me remember how it felt to be 23 or 24 or whatever, but that's a different feeling. Plus, a naked 23 or 24 year old girl would be much harder for me not to view with a strong element of sexuality or eroticism. But these photos did not at all strike me as erotic, and it really took me a few moments of looking at them with the mindset of trying to recognize controversial material in order to perceive how they could be viewed as erotic or sexualized.

You say that this is not pushing the boundaries of art, but then you go right on to say that the majority of society has decreed that children "do not need to be photographed nude." But like I was saying before, part of how art pushes the boundaries is to do or portray or show things that the majority of society has decreed that we not talk about or see or acknowledge in some way. Photographs of nude children might not strike us as radical innovation, but it is clearly challenging the accepted viewpoint, and many visual artists would tell you that part of what they seek is to try and shake people out of their normal viewpoints, to see different things.

In all fairness, I think whether the photos are tasteless or not, it is not apt to compare them to a John Waters movie, despite the fact that he himself proudly touts the movies as tasteless. His brand of tasteless is very different from what one might call these photos: his brand is definitely designed intentionally to offend and maybe even shock the sensibilities, but I'm really not sure that shock and offense are what this photographer was going for. There's a big difference between intentional shock and offense and intentionally challenging social viewpoints.

As for parenting, I'm not denying that letting your kids be photographed naked, or allowing them to take a drug, or giving them alcohol, might sometimes be bad parenting. I'm only saying that it depends on the context and situation-- the people involved, the where and the how and the why. Sometimes it might be bad parenting. Sometimes it might just be parenting you don't agree with. One could also say that being universally and inflexibly strict with kids in the matter of nudity, art, sexuality, intoxicants, and so forth might not make them less fucked up, it might just fuck them up in different ways. Sure, I've known people whose parents were too permissive, and they ended up with tons of issues. But I've known just as many whose parents were too rigid and puritanical, and they ended up with just as many issues.

In the end, I'm not suggesting that you raise your kids more permissively. I would never be so presumptuous-- I think you should raise your kids as seems best to you. I'm just suggesting that there might be other ways that work, that involve different philosophies, and have a different resulting trade-off of psychoemotional preparations. Not better, not worse. Just different.

I just think in general, more freedom of expression benefits society, and so does more flexibility about what we will and will not tolerate in the ways people raise their families.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)