AUSTRALIA:LEADING AUSTRALIAN writers and artists, including the Oscar-winning actor Cate Blanchett, have defended a photographer facing prosecution for his pictures of naked adolescents.
Bill Henson's photographs of a nude 12- and 13-year-old boy and girl had been due to be shown in an art gallery in Sydney last week, but were confiscated by police after complaints from a child protection campaigner. Other galleries have now removed similar works by Henson from public view and a fierce debate is raging in Australia about the balance between artistic freedom and censorship.
Blanchett, a mother-of-three, was among a group of prominent Australians who showed solidarity with Henson by signing an open letter expressing "dismay at the police raid on Bill Henson's recent Sydney exhibition, the allegation that he is a child pornographer and the subsequent reports that he and others may be charged with obscenity".
The letter, released yesterday, said that although public debate about Henson's work was welcome, any prosecution of one of Australia's most respected artists, or the owners of the gallery which was due to show the seized work, would damage Australia's cultural reputation.
It added: "We should remember that an important index of social freedom, in earlier times or in repressive regimes elsewhere in the world, is how artists and art are treated by the state." - (Guardian service)