In April 2014 photographer Wyatt Neumann went on a two week road trip with his two year old daughter Stella. Over the course of the trip Neumann photographed his daughter in various locations, sometimes with clothes on, sometimes without. He posted the photos to Instagram and aroused the interest of a blog called Get Off My Internets that made it their mission of the moment to get Neumann's Instagram account shut down.
Thanks for sharing. Very interesting clip. Personally I think his shots are amazing and capture the true innocence of childhood. My kids run around naked, I have a bath with them every evening but being a woman nobody would bat an eyelid if these were my shots. I think it is awfully destructive and dangerous when people see evil where there is innocence. Would I have published them? In honesty, probably not for fear of the same type of ignorant aggressive backlash that he received.
Hmm interesting discussion!! Yes I take pics of my little ones naked, yes I am a woman so does that make a difference, no I don't post them because I don't know who will see them and what they will think. I can see both sides to this one!
I'm not a parent.. but i do have an opinion. I agree with @trishaclancy about the images being gorgeous and capturing that essence of childhood. I have some great pics of my nieces and nephews when they were young things.
I do though think unwise - or certainly to think twice about what images i would choose to share in a public forum using social media. FACT is there is a disgusting and disturbing pedophile community who lurk online on the internet and steal (young) peoples images.
I've seen images of children on this site that i think cross the line and are borderline disturbing. Not in a sexual way - but images that portray darkness. They may make for thought provoking images.. but is that ok - to use them as props in that way? For me - not so. Children have no choice in whether they participate and cannot consent - not really.
Really interesting and I am very glad he was brave enough to stand up and say nudity does not necessarily equal pornography in children or adults. I have nude pictures of my children when they were babies and toddlers and I've just put a few (subtle ones) in a book of photos I've done for my son's 18th BUT those were from the good old film days when the necessity to get your photos printed reined in the 'home pornographer'. Very sadly the digital and internet age has made it really easy for people to look at photos with entirely the wrong intentions and I wouldn't post nude pictures of my children on this or any other site. Partly I have to say that is because I think the children should make their own decisions - I wouldn't put nude prints of them on the wall of our house either - they would be embarrassed and it's their body. But I have to say that the people making those horrible comments sound completely insane - it strikes me that they are the ones with a perverted view on life. I was pleased to see small children running around naked in the water fountains in London in the summer - people are terrified of people taking photos and sticking them on the internet (I kept my camera firmly in my bag!) - but it strikes me that if you can no longer enjoy running around naked in water when you are 2 years old then the world is a much sadder place. I don't think I'm making a coherent argument - I WANT it to be OK for him to put his photos out in public (blimey - mostly they don't even show anything 'significant') but I wouldn't do it myself until my children were over 18 and gave permission themselves.
I think he takes amazing photos and think they do the opposite of pornography, they highlight the innocence of childhood. The fact that she is just happy to take her clothes off and jump on a bed is one of the amazing things about children, not many adults would be doing that, and they are the ones that watch pornography. I think it is good that most people are supporting him, but actually by saying that it is “good for him to do, but I won’t do it” confounds the situation because if you are not willing to do it are you not actually agreeing that it is sexualised and therefore wrong?? The statistics show that if children are going to be abused and thought of in a sexual manner, it will be by the people closest to them, who see them in the bath anyway! Yes the internet has made it easier to share images but paedophiles and child pornography has always been a problem, it just gets a lot more airtime these days. We don’t really know if it is more of a problem today or not, except that the Daily Mail (UK) or Fox news (US) or [insert other scaremongering publication from your country] tells us so.
Great pictures, but I can't understand the need to share them online.. I don't feel comfortable sharing pictures of kids, with or without clothes, online. For close family and friends it's ok, if you're sure those pics won't end up going everywhere. I would hate find my baby pics somewhere online! Imagine how that girl is going to feel about those pictures 20 years from now?
I might be starting my photography business one day, and I would love to take baby/toddler pictures! But I really don't know of I'm comfortable sharing those pictures online.. Ever. The parents might give permission, but how about that child?
Thank you for sharing this! It is incredibly sad that we have sexualized children in our society.His images are beautiful and depict the beauty,innocence and freedom of childhood. I love what he did with his show. Reading the comments and viewing the images would certainly provide for a powerful ,and thought provoking experience.
What an excellent video, thanks for drawing our attention to it. What a creative and meaningful response to unintelligent and reactive criticism. I just love his photography.
I don't necessarily think it's wrong for parents to take pictures of their children without clothes on (trust me, there are some of me from when I was a baby that are good for a laugh), but I don't know about posting them on social media. The web is open to an unimaginable number of people, some of whom will see the pictures as artistic and some of whom will see them as something else. Whether this is right or wrong, the responsibility of a parent is to make the decision for their child's safety and welfare above all else - which, to me, would be more important than putting pictures on Insta just for the sake of art, as much as I love art. I should add that I don't think he did anything wrong, this is just a different perspective.
@hayleymolloycook Couldn't agree with you more Grace. Who knows who is trolling social media? Totally irresponsible of the man. Art maybe to him. Salacious material to many others.
The excuse for labelling, as pornography, material such as this has been recently blown out of the water with a little bit of research which demonstrates that, in Australia at least, there is no higher incident of child abuse that there was thirty or forty years ago. That's right...NO higher incidence than when I was taking naked photos of my children...who are now all over 30. All there really is is a more invasive media.
Just reading the comments above make such an interesting debate and it is so sad that people see pure innocence in a sexual manner, they are the sick ones. I take constant pictures of my kids, post quite a few, not the clothes free ones - not because they are not beautiful and full of fun, joy and childhood innocence but because I know that there are so many twisted people out there and this is just so sad. The guy's pictures are beautiful and I admire him for standing up to these trolls
I'm anti-posting pictures of children to the internet without a lot of safeguards and am getting more so. We've just had e-safety training at work and the risks of posting pictures to social media are much higher than we realise and unless we are very, very careful we can leave ourselves, as adults, vulnerable to a number of attacks: fraudulent approaches, burglary, having children snatched - there's a lot of opportunity.
Specifically, the NSPCC advice on posting pictures of children to the internet is http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/briefings/Photographing-children_wda96007.html
"Even if the child's personal identity (full name, address) is kept confidential, any other details accompanying the photo, such as an organisation or club they belong to, or a band they like, can make them identifiable and therefore vulnerable to individuals looking to 'groom' children for abuse.
There is also a risk that the photo itself is used inappropriately by others. Photos can easily be copied and adapted, perhaps to create images of child abuse, which can then find their way on to other websites."
To give a couple of extreme and rare cases, but which happen:
How do you know if you post a picture of a child that they don't have an estranged parent looking for them? And your photo puts them in a certain place at a certain time (Exif and GPS). Which is why you ask permission first, just in case, if the child is recognisable.
Your pictures of your child will locate them - very difficult to avoid all geographical location markers on all photographs - and if you name them, you've immediately given someone looking for a child to abduct a name and a location.
There are ways of sharing photos safely, with safeguards, locking down your privacy settings, secure cloud storage and sharing, but social media* is not a safe way to share photos. Just how would you feel if your child's face was used to cover an identity in child pornography on the dark net?
* Instagram, Facebook with its continual changes in personal settings, Tumblr, none of these are safe
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rita-templeton/why-i-want-my-sons-to-see-me-naked_b_5797920.html
I do though think unwise - or certainly to think twice about what images i would choose to share in a public forum using social media. FACT is there is a disgusting and disturbing pedophile community who lurk online on the internet and steal (young) peoples images.
I've seen images of children on this site that i think cross the line and are borderline disturbing. Not in a sexual way - but images that portray darkness. They may make for thought provoking images.. but is that ok - to use them as props in that way? For me - not so. Children have no choice in whether they participate and cannot consent - not really.
Anyway - good discussion points
I might be starting my photography business one day, and I would love to take baby/toddler pictures! But I really don't know of I'm comfortable sharing those pictures online.. Ever. The parents might give permission, but how about that child?
Specifically, the NSPCC advice on posting pictures of children to the internet is http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/briefings/Photographing-children_wda96007.html
"Even if the child's personal identity (full name, address) is kept confidential, any other details accompanying the photo, such as an organisation or club they belong to, or a band they like, can make them identifiable and therefore vulnerable to individuals looking to 'groom' children for abuse.
There is also a risk that the photo itself is used inappropriately by others. Photos can easily be copied and adapted, perhaps to create images of child abuse, which can then find their way on to other websites."
To give a couple of extreme and rare cases, but which happen:
How do you know if you post a picture of a child that they don't have an estranged parent looking for them? And your photo puts them in a certain place at a certain time (Exif and GPS). Which is why you ask permission first, just in case, if the child is recognisable.
Your pictures of your child will locate them - very difficult to avoid all geographical location markers on all photographs - and if you name them, you've immediately given someone looking for a child to abduct a name and a location.
There are ways of sharing photos safely, with safeguards, locking down your privacy settings, secure cloud storage and sharing, but social media* is not a safe way to share photos. Just how would you feel if your child's face was used to cover an identity in child pornography on the dark net?
* Instagram, Facebook with its continual changes in personal settings, Tumblr, none of these are safe
"...and it's people deciding for other people..."
That there pretty much says it all.
Not so for the rest of the 99%.