ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the pornographisation of the child in art, the written word, film and photograph, considering those artistic representations which have been argued to inhabit the boundaries of art and pornography in the works of the nineteenth century photographers including Julia Margaret Cameron, Clementia Harwarden, and in the twentieth century, Tierney Gearon. In both eras, the dominant discourse, in contemporary culture and legal thought, denies and disavows the existence of child pornography preferring to interpret nude 'texts' at least as the artistic depiction of innocence or harmless child 'erotica' thus positioning the issue of child pornographisation in the wider context of the realisation of child sexual abuse and its representation. The role played by particular events, notably the nineteenth century trial of W. T. Stead and the twentieth century trial of Gary Glitter in igniting a social panic with much expressed moral outrage, became defining moments in shaping new interpretations in terms of the understandings of sexual abuses against children. The chapter examines the statutory and judicial discourse which in both periods has eschewed child pornography, culminating in an analysis of the way in which the most recent panic has resulted m increasing sentences for making and distributing child pornography.
