Posted on 09/26/2016 12:44:10 AM PDT by Freelance Warrior
MOSCOW, September 25. /TASS/. The Officers of a Russia's non-governmental organization have blocked the entrance to the exhibition of the U.S. photographer Jock Sturges in Moscow in a protest against promoting his works, the organization’s head, and chair of the Public Chamber’s defense commission, Anton Tsvetkov said on Sunday.
"If considered in Russia, the works by Jock Sturges could be qualified as a crime."
"Right, he could have become famous by good pictures, but remember, this man used to participate in crimes. And he likewise was brought to responsibility also in the United States, though later on was justified. But that is under their legislation, and under our legislation taking pictures of nude children and exposing them is not allowed," he said.
Social networks and the media wrote Sturges’ works picturing nude adolescents are pornographic. Russia’s high-ranking legislator Elena Mizulina said the exhibition should be closed at once. The children’s ombudsman Anna Kuznetsova initiated the prosecution’s inspection of the exhibition.
The exhibition began working on September 8. The exposition’s press release reads for many years the photographer had been friendly with families of his models - girls and young women from nudist societies and captures them in the surroundings that are organic to them. "Nudity means nothing to anybody here…People are naked…because they are naturists and spend their summers in a resort dedicated to the absence of shame," he says.
(Excerpt) Read more at tass.com ...
The exhibition organisers have recently closed down the exhibition, while Jock Sturges has said that he was upset in connection with the closing of the exhibition of his works: “I’m very saddened, because Moscow looks like a city of the XXI century,”
In Russia are his pictures of nude children considered child pornography or obscenity?
Well, there’s no official decision yet. The Sturges’ pictures had not been an issue until some of them appeared in public display on the Russian soil. Personally, I think that pictures of nude adolescents aren’t acceptable for public demonstration.
from another Russian news outlet:
The 69-year-old photographer has been in hot water over his works in the past. In the early 1990s, his San Francisco studio was raided by FBI officers, who seized his equipment, but eventually pressed no charges against Sturges. In 1998, Alabama and Tennessee made fruitless attempts for his new book to be classified as child pornography.
Creepy.
Creepier:
Sturges boasts that he maintains a relationship with his subjects and their families, and does not exhibit a print without their permission.
“I have a sincere and ongoing relationship with these women and their families,” he said.
In at least one case, that relationship went far beyond the camera. According to a 1995 New York Times article, when Sturges was 28 he had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old model named Jennifer Montgomery
The Lumiere Brothers' First Films
"Lumière brothers, French inventors and pioneer manufacturers of photographic equipment who devised an early motion-picture camera and projector called the Cinématographe (“cinema” is derived from this name)."
Expect him to become the darling of the NEA and received with open arms and accolades to exhibit here.
He's already been extensively exhibited:
Some of Jock’s images can be found in many public and private collections, such as Philadelphia Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. link
I’ve been to the International Center of Photography several times,and don’t recall ever seeing any his *work* [fortunately].
He has been a darling of cultural elites, and the ACLU for many years.
I found this commentary from 2009 interesting:
http://www.albertmohler.com/2009/07/14/carnal-knowledge-art-in-an-age-without-moral-limits/
An outcome of the exhibition will be that the Russian public will judge the whole of the contemporary American culture by him. In the same row with gay prides. Something less contoversial never gets a comparable publicity.
Epstein and Billy J must be his biggest fans. Creepy. No wonder the Ruskis are upset. Who sponsored the show? The US Embassy?
The organiser is a private gallery, no info about the sponsors is available as yet. The gallery closed it down voluntarily, before any official move had been taken.
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