A Moscow-based photography gallery has taken down an exhibition by the US photographer Jock Sturges after being accused by pro-Kremlin activists and officials of promoting pedophilia. Sturges is known for his often nude images of children and adolescents and his work has been controversial in the US in the past.
During an impromptu news conference at the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography on Sunday (25 September), after the gallery was raided by police and uniformed activists, one of the activists poured urine on a photograph. On Monday, a Moscow court sentenced him to seven days in prison for petty hooliganism. He denied the liquid was urine.
The gallery’s founders, Eduard and Natalia Litvinsky announced that they were shutting down the show, which was called Absence of Shame. They were flanked by Anton Tsvetkov, chairman of the presidium of an organisation called Officers of Russia and a chairman of the security commission of the Public Chamber of Russia, a Kremlin-sponsored civil society umbrella group, which had also come to investigate the charges.
The exhibition, which opened on 8 September, turned into a scandal after a blogger, Lena Miro, demanded that the authorities take action. “Since when is the cultural life of Moscow involved in supporting child pornography?”, she asked in a text accompanied by provocative photos that she claimed were part of the show. The Litvinskys say the photos posted by Miro were not in the exhibition, but were used to provoke attacks against their gallery.
“We had a negative reaction from some people who thought that we are really showing photos with the theme of pedophilia,” Natalia Litvinskaya tells The Art Newspaper. “People started sending us threats and accusing us of promoting pedophilia and reported to the police that we are really doing this.”
The case against the gallery was picked up by Yelena Mizulina, a politician known for public morality campaigns, and Anna Kuznetsova, Russia’s newly-appointed children’s ombudswoman, whose husband is a Russian Orthodox priest and who has already alarmed liberals with her conservative views on sexuality. They demanded that prosecutors investigate for child pornography. Surprisingly, the Russian Culture Ministry had posted an announcement about the exhibition on its website, saying that the photos “do not leave a feeling of depravity” but the information was pulled over the weekend. On Monday, Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky denied having any prior knowledge of the show.
Litvinskaya says the show was pulled for security reasons: “During the press conference an act of vandalism was committed. Of course this act was planned. We understood that as a museum space we are responsible for the cultural property that is displayed in our photography centre. I am responsible for the security of my employees and the security of my visitors. I decided it’s better to take the exhibition down than have something happen with these photographs, something happen with visitors, with my employees. I understood that this is not safe and made the decision to remove the exhibition.”
Sturges told Russia’s REN TV television channel that the “galleries and museums all over the world had not seen pornography” in the photos. He also said that he had been highly impressed by Moscow and the “open minds” of people he met there.
Meanwhile, a virtual flash mob defending artistic freedom had gone viral by Monday with thousands of posts showing famous works of art depicting nudes, covered up as a mock response to moral policing.