Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood

by Anne Higonnet

The ideal of childhood innocence is perhaps the most cherished concept of modern Western culture, all the more so because it seems to be under siege. Pictures have always been crucial to that ideal, and now they promise to transform it.Pictures of Innocence begins by tracing the visual history of ideal childhood: the pictorial invention of childhood innocence in eighteenth-century portraits, its diffusion in nineteenth-century popular paintings and illustration, and its culmination in today's best-selling and most widely practiced forms of photography. It deals with pictures of many sorts, ranging from eighteenth-century portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds to greeting cards by Anne Geddes, from the controversial photographs of Lewis Carroll to those of Sally Mann.The book then turns to the crisis in the ideal of childhood innocence. Ever since its invention, photography has unsettled the certainties of ideal childhood, not only by revealing its inherent tensions, but also by showing how the uses and interpretations of photography can eroticize children. These increasingly acute difficulties have recently provoked a dramatic reaction in the form of sweeping child pornography laws.At an intersection between the history of ideas, art, popular culture, censorship, and law, Pictures of Innocence shows how we are in the midst of a radical redefinition of childhood itself, a turbulent change in fundamental cultural values inaugurated by images.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Research

256 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1998

Reviews

[Trice]

really encourages the reader to ponder on the divinity of childhood

[Miguel Fernandez]

Wow, Higonnet navigates challenging subject matter, reveals issues in our justice system, the history of conceptions/visualizations of children from the 18th c. to the end of the 20th, and the problematics of photography's "reality effect" within this discourse

[Yupa]

«Le immagini possono essere e vengono pubblicate in Rete per una platea potenziale di milioni di spettatori casuali senza che gli autori lo sappiano o consentano, ed essere vendute indiscriminatamente. Lo spazio privato delle immagini è diventato preda dell'uso pubblico, e più temiamo che si sia eroso il cordone protettivo tra pubblico e privato, più appare giustificata una sorveglianza pubblica sul privato che, paradossalmente, può solo erodere ulteriormente quel già fragile confine.» (p.143)

[Alison]

Very academic, fairly interesting.

[Erendira]

Art N7640 .H54 1998