Nude Child Photographs Evade Censorship

MELBOURNE—Australian artist Victoria Larielle's photographs of nude 11-year-old boys managed to dodge the kind of protest that fellow artist Bill Henson's work triggered, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. Larielle's exhibition was meant to challenge the censorship of Henson's images, which featured a nude adolescent girl and boy. Police seized Henson's photographs in Sydney last month, while a Melbourne detective only visited Larielle's exhibiton without pressing charges.

"I had always admired [Henson] as an artist," she said. "I've seen his work as a collective, not as portrayed by the media in snippets, so that you lose the whole feel of the art."

Larielle's images, exhibited in the Loop Bar in central Melbourne, were shot in 2001 in black and white and feature pre-adolescent boys in various poses outside. She said her models and their parents had given permission for the photographs to be used in the exhibition. Larielle explained that she was attempting to portray the vulnerability and fragility of people of all ages, just as Henson tried to do.