When a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Debates, Give or Take (Paris/Exhibit)
PARIS ... “Controversies: A Legal and Ethical History of Photography” was organized by Christian Pirker and Daniel Girardin, a lawyer and a curator from Switzerland, where the exhibition originated. Louvre-length, two-hour lines daily snaked out the door of the Bibliothèque Nationale here until the end of last month. (The show moves on to South America.) Inside, scrums of visitors clustered before 80 or so pictures, more or less famous troublemakers, spanning the era of the daguerreotype through Abu Ghraib.
Like everywhere else, sex and violence sell in Paris. “Controversies” ended with a David LaChapelle photograph of a white stallion nibbling on Angelina Jolie’s bare breast, the ostensible excuse for which was some legal squabble about depicting sex with animals.
There were also wall texts about copyright and fair use laws, about public decency debates, hoaxes and shifting social standards to accompany pictures like Annelies Strba’s photograph of a 12-year-old girl named Sonja in her bubble bath, Secundo Pia’s picture of the Shroud of Turin, Todd Maisel’s dismembered hand from 9/11 and Paul Watson’s image of the corpse of an American Marine dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by an angry mob.
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Like everywhere else, sex and violence sell in Paris. “Controversies” ended with a David LaChapelle photograph of a white stallion nibbling on Angelina Jolie’s bare breast, the ostensible excuse for which was some legal squabble about depicting sex with animals.
There were also wall texts about copyright and fair use laws, about public decency debates, hoaxes and shifting social standards to accompany pictures like Annelies Strba’s photograph of a 12-year-old girl named Sonja in her bubble bath, Secundo Pia’s picture of the Shroud of Turin, Todd Maisel’s dismembered hand from 9/11 and Paul Watson’s image of the corpse of an American Marine dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by an angry mob.