Naked nonsense

Sunday, 11 March 2001

Acting (it would appear) on the promptings of a Murdoch-owned tabloid newspaper, officers of Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Unit have visited London's Saatchi Gallery and warned that they will return to seize pictures from the current exhibition, "I am a Camera" (sponsored, incidentally, by The Independent on Sunday), unless some offending photographs are removed. Meanwhile, other police from North Wales have asked the BBC for a videotape of "winker" Anne Robinson's appearance on Room 101 following complaints of anti-Welsh racism. What a joy to know that our boys in blue have so much time on their hands.

Acting (it would appear) on the promptings of a Murdoch-owned tabloid newspaper, officers of Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Unit have visited London's Saatchi Gallery and warned that they will return to seize pictures from the current exhibition, "I am a Camera" (sponsored, incidentally, by The Independent on Sunday), unless some offending photographs are removed. Meanwhile, other police from North Wales have asked the BBC for a videotape of "winker" Anne Robinson's appearance on Room 101 following complaints of anti-Welsh racism. What a joy to know that our boys in blue have so much time on their hands.

Only they haven't, of course. Like all the public services, the police are hard-pressed trying to follow their worthwhile duties, without time- and resource-wasting exercises such as these. The photographs in question are the work of the American photographer Tierney Gearon, and depict her children, naked, wearing masks and urinating on snow. Reprinted several times in broadsheet newspapers and glossy magazines, they are undoubtedly provocative; to some they are disturbing. That is the point of them. It is doubtless why Charles Saatchi bought them, and why his gallery displays them.

But these photos are in a different league from the illegal and non-consensual violent images of children available on the internet. To compare them is not only to insult the artist and her children - it is to devalue the damage done to children by real paedophiles. The gallery's curator, Jenny Blyth, remarked, "They [the photographs] are funny and delightful. Tierney Gearon is totally devoted to her children. They are snapshots of children at play. They are not depraved in any way."

Of course, there is a fine line between art, pornography and an innocent depiction of reality. It would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise. It is a line of which Norman Tebbit was well aware when he compared Rupert Murdoch's Page Three girls to the nude paintings of Rubens. We must be vigilant about the blurring of that line. But this stand against the photographs in the Saatchi Gallery - or against Ms Robinson's remarks on the Welsh - makes the law look an ass.