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www.naturalimagery.net
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David Hamilton |
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 David
Hamilton's unique view of the world began forming early. World War II sent
him to the country side as a young man. It was here that the dirt and hard
edge of London was replaced with the lovely countryside of Dorset
(of Thomas Hardy fame). The dreamy beauty
of the English landscape imprinted a vision of innocence and softness one
still sees in his work today.
After the
war, Hamilton returned to London. Trapped behind a school desk in the war
torn city would not last long for him. Quitting school for a job in an
architect's office, his innate artistic skills began to emerge.
At 20, he
ventured out to Paris. It was not long before he was offered a job as
graphic designer for Peter Knapp of Elle Magazine. He quickly climbed the
ladder of success along with Elle Magazine through the early sixties.
Hamilton's
success was bitter sweet. He was hired away from Elle by Queen Magazine in
London. Even though he was art director for this prestigious magazine, he
realized his true love was Paris. Beauty to Hamilton had to always come
first.
Back in
Paris, Hamilton became art director of Printemps, Paris' largest department
store. Through all these years as graphic artist and art director, his eye
is being subtly and thoroughly trained. Directing and guiding photographers
to see and capture his ideas and vision was only the smallest step away from
forming the art himself.
Hamilton
began photographing commercially while still employed. His dreamy, grainy
style quickly brought him success. His photographs were in great demand by
other magazines such as Realities, Twen and Photo. By the end of the
sixties, Hamilton's style was clearly and unmistakably recognizable. This
emergence is documented by his first book, Dreams of Young Girls.
After 16
books with combined sales well over one million, five feature films,
countless magazine publishings and scores of museum and gallery exhibitions,
David Hamilton has become a recognizable force in photography.
Many fight
his vision of beauty. They suggest that good photography must be hard edge,
difficult or even painful to look at. Hamilton leaves the coldness and
alienation to others. There is no ugliness and pain in his work. No sharp
edges to cut the soul on.
Hamilton is a lover
of beauty. In flowers, objects, seascapes and of course, women. His works
are remembrances of times lost when innocence and beauty were the norm. When
art was beauty incarnate.
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U.S.
Circuit Court's Decision Recognizes Naturist Publications as a Protected
Tool for Political Change |
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by
Bob Morton,
A three judge panel of the
U.S. Third Circuit Court ruled on October 23, 2000, that hundreds of
seized magazines containing nude photographs are not obscene. The ruling
overturned a determination by a U.S. District Court Judge that the
magazines violated a federal law that forbids the import of obscene
materials.
In rendering its opinion, the court went beyond the return of the
confiscated magazines. It declared that the magazines deserved First
Amendment protection because of their "political value." |
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The ruling of the judicial panel
involved Alessandra's Smile, a New Jersey distributor and importer
of the two magazine titles that made up the shipment seized by
government inspectors. Jeunes et Naturels is a French
language photo-periodical printed in the United Kingdom, and Jung
und Frei is a UK-printed pictorial magazine for which the sparse
text is printed in German. As perhaps may be guessed from their
titles (Young and Natural and Young and Free), the two
magazines are predominantly filled with pictures of youngsters,
almost all of whom are nude. Even a cursory check of promotional
material associated with Alessandra's Smile leaves little question
of the target audience for Jeunes et Naturels and Jung und
Frei.
[For a naturist's critical review of these two magazines and related
matters, see the 1997 article "A Great Disservice" by Mark A. Nisbet,
reprinted from Nude & Natural magazine, issue 16.4.]
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Nevertheless, the Third
Circuit panel considered each magazine based strictly on its own content
and not on the motives of its distributor or its putative readership. In
doing so, the Court was limited to assessing only whether the magazines
were obscene. The government prosecutors had not charged that the
publications were child pornography. To
determine obscenity, the court applied the "Miller Test", a standard
developed from the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Miller v. California
case. Under Miller, a work is considered obscene if all three
of the following criteria are met:
(a) "the average person, applying contemporary
community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole,
appeals to the prurient interest;
(b) the work depicts or describes, in a patently
offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable
state law; and
(c) the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious
literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Composing the opinion of the judicial panel in the
Alessandra's Smile case was U.S. Circuit Court Judge Leonard I. Garth.
Joining him in the opinion were U.S. Circuit Court Judges Sloviter and
Scirica. On behalf of the panel, Garth wrote, "We are of the firm
conviction that the District Court clearly erred in finding that these
magazines appeal to the prurient interest because they contain
photographs of nudist children around the world engaged in activities
typical of children."
The opinion addressed and then dismissed the matter
of the intended audience for the magazines.
"Whether the magazines are targeted to minors or
adults," Judge Garth wrote, " to the extent that the photographs are of
children, they are primarily focused on children's activities, not on
the children's bodies. Children are shown swimming, boating, exercising,
playing with beach balls, having picnics, swinging on jungle gyms,
building sand castles, riding bicycles, playing guitar, riding horses,
and playing such sports as tennis, volleyball, miniature golf, and
baseball."
The opinion noted that "the photographs in the
magazines show people involved in a variety of outdoor activities, all
of which are natural and expected for healthy and active children,
teenagers, and adults. The only unusual aspect of the photographs is
that almost all of the subjects are nude."
Judge Garth compared the contents of Jeunes et
Naturels and Jung und Frei to those of Naturally
magazine, a naturist magazine offered for comparison by attorneys for
Allesandra's Smile, in part because it is published in New Jersey.
Having determined that
the material was not obscene under at least one prong of the
three-pronged Miller test, the Circuit Court could have reversed the
District Court's decision and stopped there. However, because the
judicial panel realized that its decision would have First Amendment
implications, it completed its analysis of the other two prongs.
The Circuit Court examined the photographs in the
seized magazines for any depiction of "a lewd exhibition of genitals,"
which would constitute "sexual conduct" as defined by the Supreme Court
in Miller and by the New Jersey legislature. The Court noted that the
publications contained " many photographs of nude women and girls, and
several of these photographs show the subjects' pubic areas." However,
the Court correctly discerned that "none of the photographs of females,
no matter their age, show their genitalia."
Male genitalia are of course more visible, but even
in the photographs of men and boy, the Court declared that "[t]he fact
that their genitals are visible is incidental to their being nude." The
opinion said that genitals exposed in pictures of mere nudity "are
neither being 'exhibited' nor 'shown off.'"
The third prong of the
Miller Test has to do with the literary, artistic, political, or
scientific value of the material. Alessandra's Smile had argued on
appeal that the magazines have such value because "[i]n places w[h]ere
legislatures or governments may wish to curtail social public nudity on
designated beaches, photographs provide the best 'case' that the nudism
and naturism consist of normal activities engaged in by normal people."
The Third Circuit Court panel agreed.
"These magazines," Judge Garth wrote, "qualify for
First Amendment protection because of their political value. The term
'political' which we employ here is broad enough to encompass that which
might tend to bring about 'political and social changes.' Nudists are
members of an alternative community, and the magazines champion nudists'
alternative lifestyle, which lifestyle the nudist community may feel is
in danger of being curtailed by government regulation."
The importance of this decision
must not be understated. A panel of the U.S. Third
Circuit Court has affirmed the political value and protected status of
publications that include photographs of nude adults, teenagers and
children. In addition to reaffirming that nude is not lewd, the decision
specifically underscored the constitutional legitimacy of our effort to
prevent the mischaracterization and subsequent prohibition of our
lifestyle and recreational choices.
An example: Whether or not the Third Circuit
Judges knew of a recent legislative effort in Nebraska, their decision
speaks directly to it. In 1998 and again in 1999, the Nebraska
legislature was asked to consider a bill that would have made criminals
of those possessing a "compilation" of more than just a few images of
nude children. (In 1998 that number was three; in 1999 the number was
five.) NAC played an important role in the defeat of the Nebraska
legislation, but the efforts of those opposed to the bill would
certainly have benefited from the Third Circuit Court's ruling in the
Alessandra's Smile case. For additional information, see
NAC Success Story: Nebraska LB 837
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Jock Sturges has long
been a lightning rod for controversy for his distinctive brand of nude
photography. Sturges shoots much of his work around nudist beaches in
France and northern California, and his most frequent subjects have been
adolescent girls. The photos have an undeniably erotic quality, unlike
some types of nude photography that treat the human body more as
abstract form. However, Sturges aims to draw out the models' own sense
of burgeoning sexuality in a straightforward, personal, non-voyeuristic
way. Sturges uses a large-format camera to create extremely detailed,
finegrained images, while his strong feel for sunlight bathes his models
and settings with a shimmering quality. In his writings, Sturges prides
himself on the bonds of trust, friendship and collaboration between the
photographer, the models and their families. Many of his photographs
depict several generations naked together.
Some critics have
condemned his work as thinly disguised underage pornography hiding
behind the mantle of fine art. To be fair, the market for Sturges's
books certainly includes a great many adult males who like looking at
naked teenage girls and who have little use for the photographs'
artistic qualities. Sturges and his defe nders sometimes disingenuously
proclaim the "innocence" of his pictures of nude adolescents. In a more
legitimate line of argument, Sturges criticizes the arbitrary division
of people and their bodies into sexualized adults (over 18) and
supposedly asexual children (under 18). The question really is: Should
tasteful, non-exploitative erotic photography of adolescents be allowed?
Is such a thing even possible? The photography of Jock Sturges presents
a powerful case for the affirmative.
Not surprisingly,
Sturges has faced legal threats throughout his career. In April 1990,
FBI agents raided his studio, confiscated his equipment and work, and
charged him with child pornography. Both the art world and the naturist
communities publicly came to his defense. After more than a year of
investigation, a grand jury threw out the case against Sturges. An
expensive lawsuit eventually got Sturges his work and equipment back,
though some had been damaged beyond repair.
In the mid 1990s, his
work came under attack again, this time from christian conservatives
led by Operation Rescue (led by Randall Terry, best known for
anti-abortion protests) and Focus on the Family (led by James Dobson).
Protesters picketed major book stores around the country for carrying
books by Jock Sturges, David Hamilton and others which included
photographs of nude adolescents. At some stores, protesters committed
civil disobedience by openly vandalizing the books. And in two cases
(both in the South), they managed to convince prosecutors to indict
Barnes & Noble bookstores on child pornography and obscenity charges.
Again, Sturges received strong public support from artistic and civil
libertarian organizations. Sturges himself aggressively defended his
work in a series of talks and interviews.
Jock Sturges received a BA in Perceptual Psychology and Photography from
Marlboro College, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. His
published collections include: The Last Day of Summer (1991),
Radiant Identities (1994), Jock Sturges (1996), and Jock
Sturges: New Work 1997-2000 (2000).
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Richard West
Richard West makes _extremely_ beautiful, high quality photos. In this
book, Richard tours the nudist (naturalist) clubs/resorts in Canada. The
book has short descriptions of each resort, with many photos of the
people (men, women, children, babies -- families) enjoying activities
and relaxation at these venues.
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