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My work as a photographer's agent and image dealer has recently alerted me to disturbing and unsettling attitudes toward photographers of children. I believe that a growing number of restrictions on our liberties are being unthinkingly adopted under the pretext of being "for the sake of the children".
I have recently had to wrestle with the prejudice which scapegoats photographers and artists as if they were the worst kind of child abusers. Not only have they endured investigation by the police under the Protection of Children Act, but they have also suffered unfounded accusations by individuals and the media.
Friends and colleagues, raided by the police and pilloried in the press, have had their lives irreversibly damaged - some have even had to exile themselves abroad. I have also encountered cases where innocent members of the public have been harassed or taken to court and stigmatised as a result.
To my dismay, those who are singled out for this kind of attention are met with the line that any punitive action - even that initiated against the wholly innocent - is acceptable "for the sake of the children". I challenge this assumption.
The child, clothed or naked, is a common and legitimate subject - at the heart of our culture. To find that, in the 1990s, we cannot include such pictures in our photo albums, exhibitions and coffee-table books is an indictment of our society.
It is important for us to reflect on what we are doing to ourselves and our children when paranoia about child abuse is insinuated into the lives of almost every family in the country. We should perhaps consider what effect this is having on a generation brought up under such a shadow.
I abhor and condemn child pornography and abuse, but the net is being cast far too wide. The public rightly want action on child abuse, but abusers are difficult to root out and convict. the authorities who specialise in such prosecutions appear to be extending their aim to the wrong targets.
Common sense has been abandoned in a misguided attempt to protect children by demonising images of childhood. I question whether this is really to the long-term benefit of present and future generations.
