Salon’s Charles Taylor pays loving tribute to the photographic work of Jock Sturges — “the photographer of nude young women” who “has been pilloried as a pornographer” (presumably by unsophistocated bumpkins and the soulless right wing morality police). For Taylor, though, “it’s hard to think of a less voyeuristic photographer working”:

For a photographer whose work is exceptionally composed, tranquil and, above all, mature, Sturges provokes a great deal of suspicion and even revulsion. But the more you look at the openness of his photographs, the harder it is not to feel that those reactions come from the misguided belief that acknowledging the beauty and sexuality of minors is the same thing as pedophilia.

[…]In photograph after photograph, Sturges, who is showing recent work at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery, in Manhattan (through Jan. 29), allows his young subjects to meet his camera with the steady gaze of preternatural seriousness you see in Victorian photographs of children — although unlike those photographs, in which the sexuality of both the subject and the photographer’s gaze is submerged and unacknowledged, they’re far from creepy or voyeuristic.

Got that? Photos of clothed Victorian children are creepy because both the kids and their photographers have blindly “submerged” their sexuality (read: they didn’t flirt with each other or act on “unaknowledged” sexual passions), while Sturges’ photos are exquisite because he allows his “gaze” to focus unashamedly on … well, naked kiddies.

Note to Taylor: “acknowledging the beauty and sexuality of minors” may not be the “same thing as pedophilia,” but such an “acknowledgment” needn’t require internet-posted photographs, either — no matter how ethereal the young girl’s gaze, nor how well the light plays of her young ass. She’s a minor.

Of course, Sturges blames the American “concept” of sexuality for his photos being misunderstood, but the sad truth is, one needn’t affect a continental aesthetic to recognize his visual “texts” for the what they are: finely-composed photographs of naked children. These photos can be quite striking, obviously — but what of the child’s interests?

[via Drudge Report]

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