Jock Sturges: Photographer or Pornographer?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/tiny-nudist/nude-beach-party.html Of Jock Sturges and Issues he Faced with Child Pornography Charges:
Jock Sturges is a world renowned photographer. His standing straddles the invisible line separating fine art from lewd pornography. Sturges is well referred to as a photographer of nudists (naturists). He concentrated his efforts on creating graphics of largely women and girls. The subjects ranged in age from adults to young kids.
It was the photographs of nude young children that first started the legal firestorm. https://s3.amazonaws.com/tiny-nudist/nudism-family.html in society today are still divided about the depiction of minors in nude photography.
Is Sturges a accurate visual artist and pioneer? Or has he really transgressed into the world of child pornography?
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Jock Sturges was making headlines and not for the right motives. For the younger people who might be reading this, back in the day folks needed to take rolls of film to be developed which was just what Jock did. Sadly for Jock, some tech saw the photographs and alerted the FBI to the possibility of child pornography / endangerment.
In July of 1990 numerous pictures and photography equipment belonging to Sturges were assumed by the authorities and held as evidence. At https://s3.amazonaws.com/tiny-nudist/family-nudists.html , the pictures were determined to be sexually explicit in nature. Thus a wide-scale child pornography case was looming on the horizon.
They also insisted that since these weren't pornographic images of underage children, Sturges was shielded by the First Amendment. They claimed that he had the Constitutional right to freely express himself through his selection of artistic endeavors.
Following a drawn out investigation that cost him $100,000 in legal fees, Sturges inevitably won the battle in September of 1991. Prosecutors were shocked when they heard the decision.
The "naturist" photographs of women and children taken by Sturges could be discovered in publications being sold through major retailers across the country (one of these retailers was Barnes & Noble). During the previously mentioned investigation some people had gone to local bookstores and took it upon themselves to ruin any of these publications they could find.
Following this landmark legal decision, the play continued for quite some time. There was a continued drive by certain people to have these photography books branded or at the minimum, labeled as obscene material.
In 1998 the controversy got its second wind. Another effort was made to have two of his publications classified as child pornography - "The Last Day of Summer" as well as "Radiant Identities." This effort to ban his books in Alabama and Tennessee was unsuccessful.
Unfortunately, the FBI had a way of permanently censoring artists like Jock. He says in an interview, "There are photographs I do not take now that I previously would have taken without any thought at all. Before, I did not think there was anything more or less obscene about any part of the body. I had photograph anything. Now I understand that there are specific postures and angles which make folks see red, which are signs of original sin or something, and I avoid that. But it is hard." And who can blame him for confining himself as an artist when one innocent photo can turn someone into a child pornographer?
Even some parents were taken in for investigation in the 90s after picture lab technicians reported a picture of a nude child in their own roll of film (the parents' own kids of course). Perhaps this still happens to parents now, but the digital age has made it easier to keep family photos private. Nevertheless, things have gotten more absurd since now kids themselves are facing child pornography charges from "sexting"!

Whatever the case, we've included a few pictures of Sturges' work below. In our perspective, these pictures and his other works are not pornographic or sexual by any stretch of the imagination. The scandal appears to have been the result of a prevalent anxiety and paranoia surrounding pedophiles and child pornography. Sturges also credits it to the way American society is so hung-up about sex and the manner it refuses to acknowledge children as sexual beings. He states in the same interview: "Western civilization insists on these concrete demarcations. Before 18, you do not exist sexually; after 18, you exist like crazy. It is preposterous. The truth is that from birth on, Homo sapiens is, to one extent or another, a fairly sexy species."
Read more in An Interview with Jock Sturges from 1998.
Photograph by Jock Sturges Young Girl Nude
Christina by Jock Sturges
Nude Mom and Child By Jock Sturges
Christina, Misty, & Alisa 1989, by Jock Sturges
Radiant Identities: Photographs by Jock Sturges