This post is based on one originally written in 2017 as part of my private reflective journal following an intriguing exchange with a couple of students on an MA in Photography. It was posted there in June 2017, just four months before Harvey Weinstein was first accused of sexually abusing female staff and clients of his. I have edited and added to it, but some of the references are now seven years old.
I don’t seriously believe that anyone can not be aware that there are concerns that the modelling profession is potentially highly exploitative, and that in trying to survive within it many models have been abused; whether this is overt sexual exploitation (the Directors’ couch) or indirectly related to body-image (especially leading to eating disorders). This year alone [2017] has seen meta-analyses related to thinness standards (Rodgers, et al, 2017) and similar concerns among the physical trainer community (Fernández-Balboa & González-Calvo, 2017).
Within documentary photography, and especially in the street-photography genre, there’s a widely accepted (in the majority of countries) principle, that someone in a public place has to accept that their image may be captured, and that the resulting photograph may be published, potentially for the financial gain of the photographer. However, it is also widely accepted that these photos may not be used for commercial purposes, and especially not to imply that the subject (the model) is endorsing a product, service, or brand. Doing so, would constitute abuse.
If adults are prone to these issues, then we have to be particularly concerned about children. In the UK, individuals are defined as children if they are under 18, though in certain circumstances for protection purposes, this extends to “at least 21” and therefore potentially beyond. Rather naive lay-people consider abuse to involve physical violence or be sexual in its nature. The NSPCC recognises 12 different forms of child abuse.
With children, whose brains are still developing (until their mid-20s, even) it is now known that even quite mild forms of neglect and emotional abuse (known professionally as ‘childhood adversities’) can lead to serious psychiatric conditions in adulthood – in particular schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – and we are rapidly reaching concensus as to the neurochemical basis of this (Aas, et al, 2017).
With the advent of Facebook, there are a growing number of children whose parents regularly post images of their children as they grow up. While these images might previously have been filed away in a photo album, today they are distributed widely for friends (and if the privacy settings are not used to otherwise restrict them, with the general public worldwide). There has already been one case of a child sueing her parents for the invasion of privacy that this represents (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/teenager-sues-parents-over-embarrassing-childhood-pictures-on-facebook-austria-a7307561.html).
Children (especially young ones) cannot make decisions on their own. They rely on those they trust to help them do so. Of course, most parents at various times will gently manipulate their children’s decisions in the parents’ favour. Persuading a child to eat all of its food, or to go to bed at a given time, not to use their computer at certain times, and so on, are all deemed normal child raising.
If a parent is a keen photographer, whether amateur or professional, they are likely to encourage their children to pose for their photographs to be taken. That ‘encouragement’ very easily slips into a message of conditional love, which is the foundation of emotional abuse. This is not about anything being done to them, it is about the sense that they will be loved just a little bit more if they engage, and a little bit less if they do not.
The American photographer, Sally Mann, has always been regarded as controversial by many people because of the extent to which she documented her children until puberty. Her youngest daughter described her feelings when her mother stopped doing so and began to work only on landscapes, as feeling as though she had been deserted. The two girls both associated the taking of the photos as a demonstration of their mother’s love for them; that they drew this conclusion clearly suggests that they did not get the same strength of love from other activities. Sally Mann’s son committed suicide in 2016, having suffered from schizophrenia all through his adult life. One of her daughters became a substance abuser as an early teenager, dropped out of high school, and was sent to a boarding school thereby removing her from the domestic environment. Mann herself was extensively photographed by her father as a child, and reports that she has blocked her memory of her childhood almost completely – a classic symptom of abuse.
In this digital age, though, the issues don’t stop there. A child cannot possibly be expected to understand the potential consequences of their pictures being seen by a wider audience. They depend on the person they trust to inform them in this respect. If the parent is the photographer, and their livelihood depends on the sale of those images, then I find it hard to see how this is likely to lead to neutral or trustworthy advice. This situation is bad enough when the parent depends on the income from their child and registers them with a modelling agency, but when they are the photographer and seller any possibility of objectivity is surely lost. While Facebook has guidelines in place regarding nudity, these images need not be of the naked child. The abuse is in letting the child believe that they will be loved more if they allow themselves to be photographed. Children don’t say this. Asking how they feel is meaningless as they don’t have the emotional maturity to know. They probably don’t know how they feel and won’t for many years. This is not a question of the process by which they are engaged in the photo-making itself – it is about their sense of themselves, of their self-esteem, and how (in years to come) they feel about the experiences.
As a psychotherapist, I am very aware that most people’s ‘issues’ relate to childhood events and family dynamics, and how they perceive them. As James asserted in the title of his book, “they fuck you up” [your parents] (James, 2006)
So, where does this all lead?
REFERENCES
Aas, M., Dieset, I., Hope, S., Hoseth, E., Mørch, R., Reponen, E., … & Agartz, I. (2017). Childhood maltreatment severity is associated with elevated C-reactive protein and body mass index in adult with schizophrenia and bipolar diagnoses. Brain, behavior, and immunity.
Fernández-Balboa, J. M., & González-Calvo, G. (2017). A critical narrative analysis of the perspectives of physical trainers and fitness instructors in relation to their body image, professional practice and the consumer culture. Sport, Education and Society, 1-13.
James, O (2006) They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life (2nd Ed). Bloomsbury.
Rodgers, R. F., Ziff, S., Lowy, A. S., Yu, K., & Austin, S. B. (2017). Results of a strategic science study to inform policies targeting extreme thinness standards in the fashion industry. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 50(3), 284-292.
UPDATE (19/01/25)
In early January 2025, the Dallas Fort Worth Police executed a warrant to secure images of Mann’s children on display at the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum, on the grounds that they were alleged to be child pornography. This is not the first time that such concerns have been expressed, as they were back in 1995 soon after they were taken. However, it will be interesting to see whether the tide has changed on the popularity of Mann’s work.
Inside The Vexing Past Of Photographer Behind The Fort Worth Modern Art Museum’s Offensive Exhibit