“It’s shameful that government officials would use the criminal legal process to censor art and expression.”
Police in Fort Worth, Texas, seized photographs from an art exhibit in November after local politicians decried the images as pornographic. The photos, from artist Sally Mann’s 1992 collection Immediate Family depict intimate details of Mann’s family life, including several images of her young children nude. This week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas spoke out against the seizure, arguing the images are non-sexualized works of art protected by the First Amendment.
“It’s shameful that government officials would use the criminal legal process to censor art and expression,” Adriana Piñon the legal director of the ACLU of Texas said in a Wednesday statement. “This is a clear violation of the First Amendment and of the guardrails against abuse of the criminal justice system. Artistic expression should not be subject to the whim and punishment of government officials’ personal taste.”
Mann’s photos were being exhibited at The Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, as part of an exhibit called “Diaries of Home,” which featured photographs from female and nonbinary artists that “probe preconceptions about domestic, familial, and communal spaces in the United States, which are often considered feminine spheres.”
Intimate Family contains 13 photos depicting children in the nude. Some of the images displayed at the museum included “depictions of Mann’s daughter jumping onto a picnic table in a ballet pose, Mann’s daughter lying in bed with a stain from a nighttime accident, and Mann’s son with a melted popsicle running down his body,” according to the ACLU’s press release.
Should we presume all employees and visitors of the museum will soon be arrested and charged for viewing this display?
“It’s shameful that government officials would use the criminal legal process to censor art and expression.”
But they know porno when they see it…
I wonder if any of these idiots realize that babies are born without clothing, bathe without clothing and often play without clothing when they are young. So if you take a vid of your child’s birth and then send it to your parents, is that manufacture and distribution of CP?
Are Ft. Worth police going to seize the National Geographic collection at the public library? Or their handlers don’t care about nude African & South American Indian children running around in the wild
Mann has been pushing the limits for decades. I am actually surprised it took this long to enact “justice” to protect her children, who are now of course, adults.
I feel, not based on any legal education other than my own crime, that when Mann went from taking unscripted and non-choreographed images to having her children get naked and posing for her photographs, in situations that are clearly not normal “life at home” situations. I have never known anyone who has their kids do ballet naked on a picnic table.
The investigation by law enforcement officials and any subsequent prosecution should be interesting.
As someone who was convicted of CP where there was no naked child and no actual or implied sexual contact with a child, only a partial image of a child in the far background of a photo our neighbor took of my wife with her legs spread with an open robe and sent to me while deployed, I am casually interested in this outcome.
Sometimes the line is very clear, sometimes it seems fuzzy.
Bathtub images, changing table images, topless swimming pool pics were so common in the 50-70s.
This situation is interesting. She admittedly posed her children naked, but did she do it for the sexual gratification of herself or others? I do not personally believe so, but I do not know what her fantasies consist of. Maybe she DID get sexual gratification from these images? But… can that be proven? I do not think so.
Why did this seem so familiar…. oh yeah…Mapplethorpe! WE DID THIS ALREADY!
They couldn’t get SCOTUS on board with declaring Mapplethorpe a CP producer, so they Re-Stacked that deck, and are trying again!
Challenging precedent is a necessary part of a Constitutional Democracy. If it wasn’t Jim Crow… still all legal, just like the Registry! However, constant State attempts to get something that was declared legal, made illegal perverts this idea! Yes, a system that allows “The People” to challenge oppressive laws, like Crow or the Registry, is vital to Justice and Liberty… but letting the State just keep pushing for permission to enact laws that have been declared Constitutional Violations is corrupt… especially considering the State gets to choose the Judges.
If “The People of Texas” are so Fing concerned about this photographer’s art exhibit… they have numerous ways they can voice there concerns. They don’t need to send in their “Morality Police” to raid a museum!
How much more Naziesque does this Moral Panic need to get?
I was always surprised that while I was on probation that some of my album covers never generated new charges, blind faith, Nirvana, led Zeppelin..
The bigger question……….Texas actually has an art museum? How many pictures of Pickups and cows do you think are on those walls. 🤣