Adults in the playground

INTRODUCTION

As a mother/artist making work involving my own children I am particularly interested in the issues surrounding the depiction of the child in art.

The child has come to represent so much in society today. Images of children are ubiquitous. We see them in advertising, selling everything from toilet paper to cars, on CD covers promoting bands and illustrating features in magazines and on the Internet. They can provoke memories and stimulate fear or desire. Children are used as symbols of innocence and purity, naiveté or virtue, fragility and vulnerability.

Works of art featuring children can also tap into our innermost fears or secret desires. The image of a child can produce a sense of the uncanny , particularly when there is some sort of ambiguity and our mind seesaws between a possible and impossible scenario. For example, the child may look directly at the viewer in all innocence but there appears to be something almost too knowing - a sexual glance perhaps, a look of fear or a sign of inherent evil that our conscious mind may not want to recognise. Hence, children are frequently used to create a powerful relationship with the audience, no more so than by directors of horror movies.

But generally, what can an artist say about the condition of childhood? Is it really such an age of innocence? Are children really so different to adults? Or is what we are really seeing a reflection of something inside ourselves? By imagining children to be pure and innocent, they effectively become a clean slate onto which we can map our own projections.

For an artist, making images of children can be fraught with problems. The issue of exploitation is a particularly difficult area. Is a child really capable of consenting to be the subject of a work of art? And even if they do give their consent at the time, how do we know that they will not, in later years, come to regret it? How can we allow them to make the same sort of decisions as adults if they are not fully aware of how the work will be used, or indeed what other peoples' reactions to the work might be? Particularly when it comes to sexuality, so much depends on the subjectivity of the viewer.

For example, it is possible that some viewers could see an innocuous photograph of naked children playing on a beach as pornographic. As in the case of American photographer, Tierney Gearon, whose pictures of her children standing on the beach, wearing nothing but masks (see plate 1), were confiscated by Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Squad from the Saatchi Gallery in 2001. Although it was eventually accepted that her original intention was not pornographic, the fact that someone thought these pictures could be viewed in such a way was enough for Scotland Yard to act on the complaint.

The current media frenzy over internet child porn, and the public's increasing obsession with child sexual abuse offenders, creates an atmosphere full of difficulties for an artist wanting to use children in their work, especially partially clothed or naked. Not only do they have to worry about censorship and prosecution, they also have to think about the effects it may have on the children involved.

The body of the child can undoubtedly be erotic, but there are different types of eroticism, not necessarily sexual. Carol Mavor has identified the concept of the 'maternally erotic' in her analysis of the work of Julia Margaret Cameron . She is referring to the uninhibited sensuality of children that is attractive to the mother in a non-sexual way. This has become the fascination of artists such as Sally Mann. The photographs of her children are suffused with desire, not desire in the sexual sense but in the much broader sense, including the mother's need to flaunt the physical beauty of her offspring. Family snaps, which could have been sentimental, become passionate representations of the grander themes of life: power, love, death and beauty.

Similarly, Jane Gallop talks about the 'familial gaze' in her analysis of the photographs of her family taken by her partner Dick Blau. He shows a side of family life marked by its ordinariness, which celebrates the everyday in life, not just the happy smiling 'Kodak' moments. His pictures show slices of family life, nude or otherwise that have a relaxed sensuality to them that seems perfectly natural without any hint of sexual connotation (see plate 2).

Finally, should parents who endlessly use their own children in their work be a cause for concern? Do they compromise their artistic and parental responsibilities by merging the two separate roles? And is there something oddly incestuous about an artistic project that takes one's own children as the subject?

When I look at the images I have made of my own children I see their vulnerability but also feel my own vulnerability. They make me aware of the child within myself as well as my maternal desire to protect and nurture. The thought of loosing them is so painful, they seem so fragile, so on the edge of life - my desire is to suspend them in this unique time. Making images of them freezes them forever as they are now. In the past I have used my children in my work without their consent. Now they have reached an age where they better understand the content of my work they have expressed a wish that they no longer wish to be involved. I am concerned that perhaps I have been guilty of exploiting them when they were too young to know what was going on.

My intention in this thesis is to discuss some of these issues surrounding making images of children, in particular from the point of view of the mother/artist. I shall be looking at ways that the artist can show both the fragility and the power of the child; the difficulties arising from the image of the eroticised child; and looking at some of the problems of consent versus exploitation.