Tuesday, 13 March 2001
It came as such a complete shock, when I turned up at the Saatchi Gallery in London on Thursday morning, to find that the police were already there - and that the reason they were there was because of the pictures of my family that are included in the exhibition I Am a Camera. That shock turned to disbelief when they explained to me that, because of my photographs, I might even be prosecuted for obscenity.
It came as such a complete shock, when I turned up at the Saatchi Gallery in London on Thursday morning, to find that the police were already there - and that the reason they were there was because of the pictures of my family that are included in the exhibition I Am a Camera. That shock turned to disbelief when they explained to me that, because of my photographs, I might even be prosecuted for obscenity.
Among my first thoughts were, "Why now?" After all, the I Am a Camera show had opened as long ago as January, and it got some great reviews back then; "brilliant" and "stunning" were among some of the words used to praise it. All my family were there for the opening, including the children, and they were so proud. I look back on all that now as a very happy time - though after the excitement of the opening, I was glad when things naturally calmed down. I thought that I could get back to normal life. And then, seven weeks later, this bombshell - a threat that I could be arrested. I was so shocked that I felt numb.
Even now, I find it difficult to understand. One of the pictures that the police complained about is one I took on a ski holiday, of my son Michael peeing - he was four at the time. To me, it's just a really comical image: as any parent knows, when little boys need to pee, they really need to go. I never thought it was anything other than funny and cute. So I was doubly shocked on Sunday when the News of the World decided they were "lurid" and "grotesque" instead. To me, it was a simple case of "when a boy's got to go, a boy's got to go..."
The picture on the beach, of Michael and his sister Emilee wearing masks, was taken when we were on holiday. We were waiting for a plane. I just saw the colours on the sea, and I thought it looked beautiful. I had been carrying round a bag of masks, we'd been playing with them, and I asked the children if they wanted to put two of the masks on. They liked the idea. Sometimes they want to, sometimes they don't. I didn't tell them: "You stand here, you stand there." They just ran around, and they stood the way they wanted to. There was nothing more sinister to it than that.
Now, reading the hysterical criticism of the News of the World and its attack on the publisher of this newspaper for sponsoring the exhibition, I'm left with a strange feeling. Indeed, until last week, it never even entered my head that there could be something seedy about these photographs. They're my family and friends, after all. Now I see my pictures described as child pornography, which is sad for so many reasons - but mainly because the accusers have polluted my images. If people go to an exhibition without being told what to think, they will just see whatever they see. But now a seed has been planted in people's heads, that seed will grow, at least among those who only read the tabloids. It horrifies me to think that people who may otherwise have seen the images and thought they were beautiful, might now see something different - because others have planted those ideas there.
I think of myself as a wholesome person. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't do drugs. Things at home are simple. What I was trying to do here is to give people a taste of the innocence in life. So many artists these days want to portray the dark side that it's difficult to make everyday life seem interesting - the things that make us laugh and feel good, the simple things in life. That's what I was trying to show.
I used to be a fashion photographer, doing work for glossy magazines such as Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire. I stopped for a while after I had my children, because I lost interest. Then, two years ago, I started to document my family. It was just an idea, which lit up in my head when a colleague said to me: "Nobody has been able to portray the kind of family you come from." The work of the acclaimed photographer Richard Billingham, one of the star exhibits at the Sensation show at the Royal Academy and now hanging alongside mine in the I Am a Camera show, documents his alcoholic father. It's so much more interesting - and disturbing - than my pictures. It's incredibly blistering. Whereas, when somebody looks at my family on holiday, it's: "Oh, boooring." There's no edge there. To take snapshots of a picture-perfect family - who wants to see those?
Of course, when I started photographing my family two years ago, I never dreamt any of this would happen. I was just focussing my camera and my attention on everyday moments that make us laugh, and - I hoped - touch us all. If I have succeeded, it is in taking little ordinary moments of life and making them look interesting. Now, if you're on the beach with children, then you get nudity, again as any parent knows. That's life - though in any case not all of the pictures include nudity. Of the 15 images, just six include nakedness. And I honestly can't understand the fuss.
I was born in the United States, but I've lived in London for 10 years. But though I feel at home here now, I don't know how to begin to understand the reaction in the media and elsewhere. To me, it's very unsettling, and very strange. When these people see Old Master paintings of naked Cupids - what do they see there? My pictures, by comparison, are very unsensual, very unsexual. They're humorous, if anything. My children were happy to be in the photographs. More than that, they were proud. Nor can I imagine that they will feel differently when they are older - I would not have done.
Before the nightmare of the last few days, my career as a photographer had felt more like a fairy tale. I'd never dreamed my pictures might end up on the walls of the prestigious Saatchi Gallery. I thought that if I was lucky I might publish a book in 20 years' time. But then, by chance, Charles Saatchi's wife Kay saw my photographs, liked them, and asked if she could have one to enter in Baby 2000, a charity art auction, raising money for people with pregnancy-related problems.
Then another charity - Together, a charity for the homeless - asked if I would donate an image. I gave them the picture of my son Michael on a pedestal and his grandmother looking up at him with a smile. Charles Saatchi located that image, and purchased it, too. I met other people who saw my images and loved them. Gradually, I came to believe in myself: these pictures are good. Then in March, Saatchi came to my studio, and said he wanted to buy a collection of the photographs. I thought it was a joke. "This isn't a joke," he replied. And on the basis of those photographs, he decided to do an exhibition relating photography and painting, showing the fine line between the two.
Even then, I didn't realise how big the show was going to be. I was just touched that somebody liked my pictures - until I came to the gallery at the end of last year, and saw the pictures hanging on the wall before the opening. That was when I realised that something important was happening. Everybody who saw the pictures loved them. Just one person found them a bit disturbing, and that worried me. The funny thing is, that person has in the meantime become a close friend. Now she knows my family, and loves the images, too.
As an artist and as a mother, I can only look at the images the way I see them - as wholesome. So I just hope the current furore gets diluted by time, and gets back under the shelf. After all, if these simple, innocent pictures really become a new standard for what is unacceptable, for what is pornographic, that is really frightening, and not just for me.
We have to fight it. If we don't, then something really is wrong. Personally, I haven't slept for four days. I toss and turn, I have migraines, I'm worried about my children. I've told my children: "Somebody doesn't like Mama's photos." They cannot believe it. My seven-year-old daughter Emilee asked: "Why wouldn't somebody like your pictures, Mama? What kind of person would say that? They're beautiful!"
For me, this has been a big family event. At the opening in January, the whole clan was there to support me -- and my children, when they walked in, were so proud to see their images on the wall. That night, any doubt in my mind, if I had had any, which I didn't - would have been settled. My children and their friends were so proud of themselves, and of me.
As for the reaction in the British press: who can say? I don't think it's really about British society, it's only about the media. I heard about the story of Julia Somerville, who was questioned a few years ago because of pictures of her children naked in the bath. Maybe it's because the papers don't have anything to write about any more. When I saw the pictures in the News of the World - "Child Porn They Call Art", the headline said - they put black bands across my children's genitals. The pictures looked dirty for the first time. You can't even see their genitals, and yet there's still something dirty about the way those pictures look in the News of the World, whereas on the wall, they look pure and clean. Those big black boxes succeed in making my pictures look dirty.
The police are trying for a court order to remove the photographs on Thursday. I just hope that they don't succeed. The world I've brought my children up in is a free, positive world. All I want is for that not to change.
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