Ho Hum....she's not catholic, no matter how hard you want her to be.

I cannot understand where the disagreement is. You people want to view naked children dressed up in adult women jewellry? Pictured alongside degrading and violent images at that! You want naked photos of young teenagers on your walls? What the hell is wrong with you?

That fact that someone has to write an article explaining what is wrong with this is very disturbing indeed.

As for "David" he was a grown man wasn't he? Not a little child following mummy and daddy's instructions to "pose."

Elka: "You people want to view naked children dressed up in adult women jewellry?"

Is that the only reason you think of to defend Henson, Elka? That people defend Henson's art because they like looking at it, I mean. If so, I have information for you: some of us take our moral judgements beyond that simplistic line of reasoning. My judgement on whether its OK to publish such are has nothing to do with my personal opinion of it at all. It doesn't matter whether I love it or hate it, whether I am uplifted by it or feel it violates my principles. Regardless of what I think of it, I feel strongly that the magazine has a right to publish it.

If someone could show there was real harm caused by this picture, I would take a very different view. As it is, all the direct participants - the girl, her parents, the magazine, seem happy with the outcome. Tankard Reist doesn't deny this in the article. Certainly she thinks the child is harmed, but I take it accepts that no one involved agrees with her. She offers no proof the child is harmed - the article is just a finely crafted essay making her feelings on the matter obvious. Just for the record, I don't consider someone being offended by a picture they could of just as easily ignored as "harm". Or if it is harm, it is self inflicted.

But here is the rub, Elka. I don't think Tankard Reist's feelings matter any more than mine do. Why does she to believe she has the right sit in judgement, when so many of us refrain? It beats me.

So Elka, if you can see some direct harm produced by this picture, then tell us about it here. Otherwise like Tankard Reist all I have is your indignation. Compared to higher ideals like being able to freely share ideas, like tolerance and equality it must take second seat; just like my opinion of the picture does.

runner shouled be ashamed. Let me direct readers to this comment in case they believe that rubbish from the religious runner:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1955&page=0#40282

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Elka, do you support murder of the unborn child? You might refer to it as abortion.

rstuart has a good point. If that is as far as your intellect can reach, then you have little hope of ever understanding the issue and becoming a more enlightened individual.

I see Steel, the supporters of the porn industry should be proud while the opponents ashamed. The industry that has caused multitudes of young indigenous kids to be sexually abused is to be applauded in your eyes.
The 'Little Children are sacred report' exposes your naivety or deceit. From the report we read

."It was subsequently confirmed at the regional meetings conducted by the Inquiry in February and March 2007, that pornography was a major factor in communities and that it should be stopped," the report continues.

"The daily diet of sexually explicit material has had a major impact, presenting young and adolescent Aboriginals with a view of mainstream sexual practice and behaviour which is jaundiced.

"It encourages them to act out the fantasies they see on screen or in magazines.

"Exposure to pornography was also blamed for the sexualised behaviour evident in quite young children.

"It was recommended that possible strategies to restrict access to this material, generally, and by children in particular, be investigated."

You might want to continue to bat for this perverted industry which leads to family breakdown and child sexual abuse but to take the moral high ground is really comical if it was not so sad.

runner: << I see Steel, the supporters of the porn industry should be proud while the opponents ashamed... >>

As usual, runner's reasoning is somewhat muddled. This is a discussion about works of art that feature images of naked children, not about pornographic images that have been implicated in child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory.

Only the most prudish critics of these artworks consider them to be pornographic - rather, most critics seem to be uncomfortable at suggestions that the child models are being 'exploited' in some way by the artists. This is an argument with which I personally disagree, but at least it is one that is arguable within the parameters of our prevailing social, ethical and moral standards.

Of course, it is by reference to these same standards that the appropriate authorities have determined that the images are not pornographic or exploitative and are therefore perfectly legal to display and publish in Australia. To assert that these standards are 'perverted' is to assert that Australian society is predominantly perverted - which may indeed be runner's idiosyncratic belief.

While he's entitled to think that and even to babble on incessantly about it, it in no way means that the old wowser is right.

rstuart

‘We have replaced bigotry with tolerance. To its credit the art world done its bit in making this transition happen by, as you say, "its unchecked addiction to pushing boundaries".’

Frankly, the Henson/Olympia affair has shown the art world to be a lot more bigoted than the general community. It’s a myth that the art world is tolerant; in fact, the art establishment has always shown itself to be notoriously INtolerant.

Besides I don’t believe that the Henson/Olympia images are pushing any boundaries that are worth pushing – just continuing the same old patriarchal ‘male gaze’ clichés, but with younger objects. As far as I’m concerned, Germaine Greer’s visual polemic, ‘The Boy’, pushes much more original boundaries – by repositioning the voyeur as clothed, adult and female, and the voyeur’s object as unclothed, young and male.