ABSTRACT
There has been something troubling about pictures of children as people approach the end of the twentieth century, and the troubles have often seemed to centre on the photographic medium. The photographic media have been at the basis of a contemporary whirl of visual attractions. The photographing of stone babies has given the author a great deal of pleasure, and she also have a collection of postcard babies which is made up of purely hedonistic images. New British art magazines such as Alice and Caffeine present imagery, much of it photographic, which explores taboos around childhood. Taboos are not rules imposed by some censorious father figure. Instead, they provide a way of dealing with experiences which are unavoidable components of everyday life, but which are, at the same time, as Freud's patient insisted, 'impossible' –sickness, death and bodily functions; the unfairness in the distribution of pain and distress; the wrenching reality of birth.
