Nope — here in Adders, predictably enough, we tend not to get the Age unless we go out of our way, especially since it abandoned its brief but noble effort to become (at least to some extent) a national paper. Online only these days. But I used to teach Victorian literature so the picture is very familiar to me, and has always weirded me out — although a bit of discriminating online scrounging before I posted it at PC has led me to conclude that the speculation about Dodgson’s dodgy proclivities is probably a beat-up.

But the horse has bolted in that regard long ago.

I had a lot of sympathy for a throwaway line someone said in a news report, that there is no place for police to be raiding art galleries. Until I remembered that I had posted about an instance where it would be completely appropriate.

Not all art is well done. A lot is clumsy and blunt – just like porn. I see a lot of Juan Davila’s stuff as a bit juvenile and clumsy and blunt and obvious.

There is wider awareness of child sexual abuse in the last 20 years or so but more acute in the last 5 years. This does call for a re-evaluation the notion of permission, context and images. Clearly no one would suggest that if a 13 year old person and her or his parents gave permission for a set of sexually explicit movies then that would be ok.

How then are we to deal with permission of the young person (or parents) for unclothed or even clothed suggestive portraits in which sexuality is involved? The debate is needed even if the current way it is framed is crude.

Strapline is “”I am real!” said Alice, and began to cry.”

I had noticed that picture and I’d assumed that was why you chose it – but it certainly would be one which comes to mind if you were thinking of NQR photographs in history.

It’s been cropped to waist height so she seems much more to be looking sidelong at you.

Good lord, has it really? Apropos of what? I know the image of old and have always been a bit spooked by it — what on earth is it doing in the Entertainment pages of the Age?

I imagine if the witch etchings had been recent photographs my lecturer would have preceeded them with some sort of warning (they’re not just naked, there are broomsticks being put to unconventional uses). He probably wouldn’t have used them at all if they’d been recent photographs, what with being a lovely gentlemany type.

I started wondering this morning if Australians generally are more familiar with pron than art.

There was one that was very disquieting (lovely word Su) to me, which was more suggestive of violence between the photo’s subjects than between subject and photographer. On the other hand, many of his photographs don’t feature nude bodies at all, because that’s not primarily what he’s about (I think). They’re certainly very, very dark, all of them.