Since we live right outside NYC, it was easy to get to all the go-sees and auditions.
It was a fun little job and provided our family with lots of adventures.
(In the top pic, my daughter is the girl in the forefront, middle, behind the blond girl with her hands on her head and my son is the boy front and center. He is also in the second pic, forefront, walking towards the little blond girl.)
In 2003, two of my children were asked to dress in white and meet at a building near Times Square. The job paid very well and took a few hours. Two of the images are shown above.
I knew the photographers were a Russian collective of artists and that the photos were to be a part of a series. That is all I knew.
I was able to see the images at a gallery when they first were shown but had to leave quickly to another event and wasn't able to read any of the descriptions of the show.
Over the last nine years every now and then I would google and try and find the images. This week I hit the jackpot and found them. I also found some reviews and you can imagine my surprise when I found out what the "subject" of the series was...
see highlighted...
The King of the Forest
Robert Leonard and Janita Craw
![](http://www.ima.org.au/media/publishing/pamphlets_2006/aesf-text.jpg)
King of the Forest drips with art, advertising and pop culture associations. AES+F put a real spin on Vanessa Beecroft (with her performance-tableaux of inscrutable glamorous naked women), Shirin Neshat (with her orientalist videos of massed milling 'Others') and Art Club 2000 (a tribe of identically dressed juveniles who gathered in Times Square to be photographed). It also recalls fashion advertising campaigns for Benetton (whose multicultural appeal veils dubious third world labour practices), Calvin Klein and others. The King of the Forest trilogy remains ambiguous. The films are like ads which largely forgot to mention their product. The children instead seem to absorb the background ideological associations of their locations. The films' extended duration grants us the chance to map a variety of contradictory interpretations and affects: to see the children as innocent and knowing; as vulnerable and sublime; as the filmmakers' patsies and as coquettish spoilt agents. One moment we are jealous of their perfect existence and good looks, the next fearful for their safety. Equally our concern over their possible exploitation gives way to a realisation that their beauty can be used to exploit us. Kids may be captive but they are also captivating, their beauty exercising a magical force over us. As Elena Zaitseva explains, AES+F leave us 'balanced on a fine line between nobleness and treachery, bewitched by a beauty that has turned into a trap.' 'Our protest against the "stealing" of children does not prevent us from admiring them.'
Sometimes reality intervenes after the fact, changing the significance of an artwork forever. It's hard not to read King of the Forest in this way. On 1 September 2004, terrorists calling for Chechnyan independence 'stole' hundreds of staff and students at a school in the Russian town of Beslan. They herded their hostages into the school's gym. Deprived of food and water, the hostages were forced to drink their own urine; to cope with the stifling heat they were stripped to their underwear. On several occasions, released or escaped children were photographed fleeing in their smalls. By targeting 'innocent children', the terrorists were guaranteed the glare of world attention. The media milked it for all it was worth, giving the terrorists the publicity they sought, viewers something racy, and their advertisers a bigger audience. Three days in, a shoot-out between the terrorists and Russian security forces claimed the lives of over 300 hostages, more than 170 of them children. Despite moralising over evil, the media would be criticised for participating in it by running exploitative suggestive images of traumatised children in their whites. It is at such moments that our moral panic over child abuse spectacularly aligns with reality, and our obsession with safeguarding childhood innocence reveals its pornographic underbelly."
OOOOKKKKAAAYYY!
We thought it was a fun little job. it was safe, (the barricades and security officers were photoshopped out of the pics) the kids were given lots of breaks, were well fed, and got to be with their friends.
Who knew that the "subject" was about exploited children, as in our case-models.
So bizarre to find out nine years later.
meanwhile?
My kids think it is cool to finally see the pics of that fun day they remember from years ago.
Now THAT is innocence.
6 comments:
Whoa. That's quite an analysis. You have beautiful kids and had a fun time being part of this event a few others. That's that. :)
Yikes, that's a disturbing concept. Your kids, however, are absolutely gorgeous. :)
Thank you JMW! As are yours :)
Merry, Thank you! On another note, hoping to go to Brimfield in May- have you ever been?
I have not! I'd say there's a good chance that DH and I will be moving to Boston sometime next year. I don't think we'll be out there for the May show, but maybe July or September?
Wow! But I imagine if you knew no one would do it. They are really cool shots though.
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