1015
Margaret Cameron also photographed nude children,
often “clothing” them as allegories or presenting them
as Christian subjects. Had Cameron not been female,
her photographs would have caused as much concern
among historians as Carroll’s. Oscar Rejlander also pho-
tographed nude children, employing them to personify
Painting and Photography, for instance, and having them
echo putti in Renaissance paintings such as Raphael’s
renowned Sistine Madonna. It is exceedingly diffi cult
for us in the twenty-fi rst century to view such images
without being affected by contemporary concerns re-
garding paedophilia and child pornography, and it must
also have been diffi cult to do so in the Victorian period.
Regardless of whether children are asexual or have
sexuality instincts latent in them from an early age (as
Freud believed), in a post-Freudian society photographs
of nude children exude a disturbing eroticism.
Finally, it is useful to distinguish between the com-
pletely and the partially nude fi gure and to consider
what effect the presence of some clothing has on the
erotic nature of the image. Freud’s emphasis upon the
erotic nature of the partly veiled body was echoed not
long ago by the French theoretician Roland Barthes. “Is
not the most erotic portion of a body where the garment
gapes?” he asked in The Pleasure of the Text (1975). “It
is intermittence ... which is erotic,” he continued, “the
intermittence of skin fl ashing between two articles of
clothing.” Conversely, the philosopher and legal scholar
Thomas Nagel (2002) has argued that concealment
and decorum are inseparable and that the exercise of
restraint, especially with regard to clothing, is essential
to civilized interaction among men and women.
Graham Smith
See also: Durieu, Jean-Louis-Marie-Eugène;
Delacroix, Ferdinand Victor Eugène; Degas, Edgar;
Bonnard, Pierre; Hill, David Octavius and Robert
Adamson; Rejlander, Oscar Gustav; Eakins, Thomas;
Day, Fred Holland; Gloeden, Baron Wilhelm von;
Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge (Carroll, Lewis); and
Cameron, Julia Margaret.
Further Reading
Clark, Kenneth, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, New York:
Pantheon, 1956.
Edwards, Susan, “Pretty Babies: Art, Erotica or Kiddie Porn,”
History of Photography 18:1 (Spring 1994), 38–46.
Ellenzweig, Allen, The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images
from Durieu/Delacroix to Mapplethorpe, New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1992.
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne, “Braquehais and the Photographic
Nude,” in Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in
Paris 1848–1871, New Haven & London: Yale University
Press, 1994, 149–194.
Nagel, Thomas, “Concealment and Exposure,” in Concealment
and Exposure and Other Essays, Oxford & New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
Pellerin, Denis, “File BB3 and the erotic image in the Second
Empire,” In Paris in 3D: From stereoscopy to virtual real-
ity 1850–2000, in association with the Musée Carnavalet,
Museum of the History of Paris, ed. Françoise Reynaud,
Catherine Tambrun, Kim Timby, London: Booth-Clibborn
Editions, 2000, 90–99.
Phillips, Sandra S., “Identifying the Criminal.” In Police Pictures:
The Photograph as Evidence, San Francisco: San Francisco
Museum of Art/Chronicle Books, 1997.
Smith, Alison, The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality and Art,
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.
Smith, Alison, ed., with contributions by Robert Upstone et
al., Exposed: The Victorian Nude, London: Tate Publishing,
2001.
Waller, Susan, “Censors and Photographers in the Third French
Republic,” History of Photography 27:3 (Autumn 2003),
222–235.NUTTING, WALLACE (1861–1941)
Nutting was born in Rockbottom, Maine, and raised on
his uncle’s farm by his widowed mother. After quitting
school his mother encouraged him to become a minister.
Nutting married a widow called Mariet Griswold Cas-
well during his theological training and was a Congre-
gational Minister until the age of forty-three, when he
retired due to Neurasthenia. Not content to just write and
travel, he produced antique reproductions of American
furniture and took up photography. In his lifetime he pro-
duced over a million hand-tinted platinum prints of an
idealised country life and its buildings’ interiors. Nutting
was so successful at one point, that he was employing
over a hundred people to assist him in his work. His three
volume Furniture Treasury was a guide to American
antiques, which fi rmly established the business of an-
tiques within America. The guide was illustrated with
more than fi ve thousand photographs of early American
furniture, mostly taken by Nutting himself. He produced
a series of guide books dedicated to his extensive travels.
These books depicted scenes of beauty from both Great
Britain and America; for example, England Beautiful.
He also published, in1924, a book called Photographic
Secrets. Aside from his books, Nutting established fi ve
profi t making museums in which to house his photo-
graphs and examples of American furniture. Nutting’s
photographic infl uence upon America was displayed
in magazines such as Country Life, whereby in 1902 a
collection of Nutting and Stieglitz’s photographs were
published together.
Jo Hallington