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Child Pornography and Sexual Grooming: Legal and Societal Responses. By Suzanne Ost. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 273. $95.00 cloth.
In 2007, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead sought advice from the police to find out if a photograph from established U.S. photographer Nan Goldin was child pornography. The photo, Klara and Edda Belly Dancing, is part of an installation depicting Goldin's personal life and is owned by Elton John. It features two young girls, one dancing semi-clothed, the other naked lying on the floor, genitals in full view. The police concluded it was not child pornography. Why have we, like the gallery, come to think child nudity could be pornographic? Is it, as Canadian courts argue, that context matters and if a family photo of a child bathing is found in the stash of a pedophile it is there for a sexual purpose and thus becomes pornographic? But why worry about art shows? Could it be, as these courts suggest, that child pornography distorts the minds and incites pedophiles to sexually abuse children? With this reasoning any representation of the child anywhere becomes suspicious. How did we come to adopt the viewpoint...