Not Safe for Sydney (NSFS)

For the Guardian, Shane Danielson writes the proper defense for Australian photographer Bill Henson and a measured response to his harassers, chief among them prime minister Kevin Rudd. You already know the script: Photographer snaps non-sexual nude images of adolescents, finds admiration home and abroad, courts persecution from state prudes. The Sydney Morning Herald has the sordid particulars, including multiple gallery raids across the country.

Note that the police claim that they are acting on new complaints they have received about the photographs. It's actually rare that you will find any recorded complaint against an art work in culture-war cases alleging obscenity in art before the state interferes. After the fact, of course, the controversy alerts puritans who are plenty willing to speak up against art works they never knew were there. Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and Nan Goldin all had successful runs in modest- to large-scale exhibitions that received no complaints (more likely, glowing reviews) before politicos seized on the works—after the fact of the exhibitions—in prurient appeals to prudishness. Henson, too: His retrospective drew 115,000 viewers three years ago to the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of Victoria. With not one complaint generated over those runs, according to Alison Croggon's letter on behalf of Creative Australia 2020 Summit representatives.

Unfortunately, the preoccupation with child protection and photography has become something of a paranoid style in all the former elements of the British Empire. I know Austin Mitchell to be on UK politician who has opposed the official harassment of photographers (in Britain it's street photographers who must beware). In Australia, it's Cate Blanchett who's giving the state what-for.