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Photographs of children are the most mundane of mementos; they're on everyone's mantel, desk, or refrigerator. So why are they the most prone to scandal, trailing in their wake congressional hearings, F.B.I. investigations, and every variety of sensationalist media frenzy? Spanning over a century, the photographs in this exhibition confront us with children who are at once transfixingly beautiful and yet curiously remote, strange to us and our accustomed ways of seeing them. Collectively they invite us to consider the stories we now tell ourselves about children, adults, and sex: to wonder in particular about our fascination with the undisplayed sides of childhood; and why, finally, it has become remarkably difficult (not to say dangerous) to think of children as beings possessed of even the smallest degree of sexual agency. Artists in the exhibition will include Julia Margaret Cameron, Larry Clark, Sally Mann, Jock Sturges, and Weegee. The Sexual Child was organized by Peter M. Coviello, Assistant Professor of English for his course, English 301: The Sexual Child.
Pictured above:
Julia Margaret Cameron, British, 1815-1879, Portrait of Maud, 1870-1872, vintage albumen print from glass plate negative, Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund, 1994.9
