Those of you in the Boston area might want to check out photographer Lauren Greenfield’s amazingly brilliant Girl Culture exhibit, on display until April 5th at the Tufts University Art Gallery in Medford, MA.
The exhibit, and much of Greenfield’s other photography as well, seeks to capture and illuminate the ways in which girls and women use the body as a site for the creation and performance of identity. As Greenfield states in her synopsis of the work:
The body has become a primary expression of individual identity for girls in contemporary American culture. Girl Culture investigates girl's relationships to their bodies and the ways in which they use body projects to establish their identities. The photographs explore the relationship between girl's inner lives and emotional development, and the material world and popular culture. They also reveal the exhibitionist nature of modern femininity through moments of vanity and performance in everyday life.
For some analysis of the themes of Greenfield’s work (as well as discussion of pieces by the gallery’s other featured artists, Alex McQuilkin and Barbara Zucker), check out Cate McQuaid’s review from the Boston Globe (again).
-- by Lauren
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Art?
Or mostly naughty pictures?
tfreridge, I think you can only hope that they're naughty pictures.
With that childish taunt behind me...
I saw Greenfield's works when they were on display locally (I live in the Orlando area), and they were excellent. She is one talented lady.
If anyone's interested, I have recs for more feminist/female-centric artists and photographers. Adolescent female self-image was my focus area for my IB Studio Art SL body of work.
Lauren Greenfield won the 2004 International Photographer of the Year award in the category of Editorial for her Youth in Milan series (also featured at the link in the article). There's no question that it's art, and that many people consider it very good art.
If some of the images are slightly disturbing... that's the point.
tfreridge:
There's an NYU law professor who did some work on the issue you raised. We as a society are now so on the lookout for pedophilia that we may actually be making the problem worse. There's an art exhibit about young women and their relationship to their bodies. You, no pedophile (I assume), immediately ask if they're naughty pictures. I further assume that isn't because you would find them sexually arousing -- they're probably too young for you. But you wonder who else might. So now you're seeing the world through the eyes of a pedophile, and asking other people to do so. I assume you don't really know how a pedophile thinks, so you must be inferring a pedophile's point of view. And you're sharing that infered point of view.
Now, if we all look at a twelve year old girl, and all agree that a pedophile would see her as sexually attractive, aren't we just making it ever easier for more people to see her as sexually attractive? What I mean to say is, if we all look at a twelve-year-old and say "Not me of course, but don't lots of men get aroused by that?", don't we just normalize arousal at images of twelve year olds?
I'm holding that analysis at arms' length because I see some problems with it. But I wanted to throw it out there because I think it does have some explanatory power.
That is an extremely interesting idea. I would like to read more about these studies. I believe that these perversions can be learned/developed through long term exposure, and/or molestation when young.
While I am definately not a pedaphile, I do find certain lolita ideas(impressions)seductive (Juliette Lewis in "From Dusk til Dawn"), and am disgusted by it at the same time. I suspect that people who are unreasonable about alternative lifestyles have similar feelings(interest/disgust) because I have a passionate hatred for child molesters.
In the time I spent in Europe, it appeared to me that they were more open about their sexuality, but it also seemed that they were more decadent/perverse in their pursuit of self gratification. Sacrificing the closeness of a relationship for the purely physical sensations.
I don't think being on the lookout for pedephilia can make it worse. I think normalizing seductive imagery and lowering expectations of teen behavior ("they are going to do it anyways") has created a monster in our society. The problem is worse than it has ever been and we need to face up to it as a society.
Tfreridge: I googled the professor's name, and I found a copy of the article on the web. It has been years since I read it; this copy has highlighting and I don't know by whom. Like I said, I don't adopt this argument, though I think it is not easily dismissed.
Also, you said "studies." It's not empirical research. It's a theory piece.
URL below:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ilaw/Speech/Adler_full.html
It is an interesting argument, but I can understand why you wouldn't adopt it. It's circular, with no solution other than, maybe if we ignore it, it won't get worse?
The only solution I can offer to this problem is draconion......give convicted molesters a choice, chemical castration(seems to be working in texas) or institutionalized for life. Until science can figure out what causes this........and can fix it.
Lauren Greenfield is an amazing photographer. The photos in the exhibit are also in her book, also called Girl Culture. It has really fantastic essays written by the girls and women in the photos.
The pictures reveal a wide variety of women's experiences. And however sexual some of the pictures may be, they aren't "naughty" pictures.