Irina Ionesco is French photographer known for her sensual and sometimes controversial work. She reminds me a little bit of Ellen von Unwerth and a little bit of Sarah Moon. Her crisp black-and-white images focus on artificial beauty and harbor a fetishistic fascination with lace, beads, fake flowers and other textures. Born in 1935 in Romania, Ionesco traveled the world and painted before discovering photography. She is a cult favorite among alt photographers, and her influence can be seen in the work of John Santerineross and Tina Cassati.
What made Ionesco’s work controversial? Her most prolific model was her daughter, Eva. At a young age, Eva posed semi-nude for her mother to create artsy, erotic images similar to Irina’s work with older models. Some images of Eva by Irina (NSWF links ahoy!), though nude, look more like a child playing dress-up to me, but others have a distinct fetish element. To me, these are some of Ionesco’s most powerful images.
Eva Ionesco
Irina’s daughter Eva went on to model and act in many productions that no normal parent would ever let their child near today. It makes me wonder how her career would’ve gone if she hadn’t started posing for the images above. At age 11, she became the youngest model ever to appear in a Playboy pictorial by Jacques Bourboulon in 1976 (check out his doleful Wikipedia entry). Two years later, her images appeared in a Spanish edition of Penthouse in a selection of her mother’s photographs. Eva’s acting debut, also at age 11, was in The Tenant by Roman Polanski (yikes!). That same year she appeared as a Lolita-type character in a soft-core sci-fi film called Spermula. Her career wasn’t all erotic, and she soon graduated to playing varied roles in French cinema and on stage that didn’t revolve around sexuality.
Is it OK to take artistic nude pictures of your children, to publish them? I say yes, depending on context. Sally Mann did it - she too got accused of child pornography - and these images have made her one of America’s most prolific photographers, not because of the controversy, but because the images resonated with people. They recalled the confusion and turmoil of being a female and discovering your sexuality at a young age, a taboo subject that Mann addressed powerfully. Then again, Sally Mann never let her images of children appear in fucking Penthouse. On the other hand, in 1970s Europe, the level of stigma attached to taking sexual images of underage girls was much lower than what it is today, so Ionesco may have had the excuse of a different time, a different culture. My first instinct is to defend Ionesco because the images are beautiful, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder about the ethics of showcasing her daughter the way that she did.
Was Ionesco an irresponsible parent, or a product of her time?
January 21st, 2008 at 11:58 am
Those art pictures are fine, I guess, but the kid being in Penthouse? That isn’t. Making art with kids and kids getting in a magazine that is obviously for men and in the porn side are two different things. I hope that the girl was mature enough to know what she was facing when posing for those magazines!
January 21st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I’m reluctant to excuse the exploitation of one’s child for the pleasure of grown men for any reason: the European/1970’s argument would hold water with a sexually developed girl of, say, fourteen but NOT with an undeveloped child, and regardless of how beautiful the images are (and they are stunning) they lose their innocence after being published in a magazine designed exclusively for masturbation fodder.
The only justification I could possibly see in doing this to a little girl is perhaps she couldn’t get the images published anywhere else? This argument is still unsatisfactory. I wonder if she ever explained her reasons for thinking this was a good idea?
I think that, particularly in the States, some serious re-thinking needs to be done with regard to child pornography and exploitation. I think a person is sexually mature enough to have autonomy of their bodies well before the age of 18, and it’s unnatural to categorize teenagers as children. But I truly don’t believe that an eleven year old girl should get a Penthouse spread, and I would love to hear that argument be made.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Of course she didn’t know what she was doing, and shouldn’t have to know either. Sexual content ages 0-18 is legislated against for good reason. Possibly the mother was too full of drugs or something, to miss the difference between art and sex exploit… Beautiful images of her kid that she herself shot, but sex mags? Makes me wish for a thorough test to become a parent.
An artist like Sally Mann clearly knows the difference (whatever some fundamentalists claim) when making Immediate Family.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:54 pm
The images of Eva are beautiful, inarguably, likely Ionesco’s best work. I love this one, in particular. I wonder if Eva feels exploited, herself.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:19 pm
@ Zo…I agree, that image is fantastic, probably my favourite. I would like to hear what both she and her mother have to say about this.
Pure speculation, but I reckon Eva is perfectly fine with it. Most home-schooled fundy kids have no regrets about their upbringing, either, even though their path in life was forged for them.
Every person owns their sexuality, and the moment someone else makes the decision FOR YOU to be published in a sex mag, you’ve been robbed of that ownership.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I think that if Irina Ionesco had been a male photographer, people would be even more outraged.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I don’t think it was right to publish those images of her daughter where she did. It all seems a bit selfish. But i do agree that the pictures are beautiful.
Thinking of Sally Mann’s work, it has a different feel to it than this, more playful, less structured. A child with a smear of mud, holding a fake cigarette seems less shocking than Eva’s poses. Nomatter how much nudity is on display.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:55 pm
@ Nadya…you’re totally right. I think if the photographer were a man, we’d crucify him. Female erotic photographers are often sanctified while the motives of their male counterparts are scrutinized. The whole (rather boring) art vs porn debate.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I think that the images are beautiful . . . but I must admit that context is key. Publishing the images in a coffee-table book or hanging them on a gallery wall is very different from publishing them in “Penthouse.”
Art can always be used as spank material, but the difference is whether it’s intended to be something that’s beautiful which stands on its own (and can be fodder for sexual fantasy by the viewer, but that’s between the viewer and the image, rather than the artist’s intent.)
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking the photos (in 1970’s Europe, she’d have gotten lynched for them here/now), but I do think that she crossed a line by allowing her daughter to appear in “Penthouse.”
And this is speaking as the parent of a 15-year-old, fwiw!
– A
January 21st, 2008 at 6:59 pm
So true, Nadya, I hadn’t thought of that. Oh my, he’d be dead in a week.
Still these images of her child are very beautiful.
Doesn’t matter what the kid thinks of that time today, she never had a choice.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:03 pm
@ Milly…”Every person owns their sexuality, and the moment someone else makes the decision FOR YOU to be published in a sex mag, you’ve been robbed of that ownership.”
Well that’s the thing…one doesn’t really own their sexuality as much as they make peace with it. One can have it exploited, denounced, manipulated, etc. well before puberty even hits. Depending on the environment ones grows up in sexuality isn’t even a choice but a series of dictated rules. Those who get to honestly explore it without outside intervention are rare…and in this case the child was exposed to it and explored it early enough that even a publication like Penthouse more than likely had no impact. All Penthouse did was publish them…it was not FOR them like your typical centerfold stuff.
Sure they could have been published in an art book style and hung in galleries…but how many would see them? With Penthouse they got a mass audience. A bold choice that while highly questionable from a moral standpoint makes pretty good sense from promotional standpoint. These are images clearly meant to be seen and illicit a strong response. Ultimately art doesn’t always have the choice in how or where it is displayed…
I have STRONG issues with child exploitation and these at least for me don’t fall into that category. They’ve a much different feeling and atmosphere and really do have a quality only a parent could bring out it seems…I just don’t think one would get the same expression from the child if it was for someone other than a parent. A few even have that “Take the picture already mom…” kinda look. So in that way they do feel far more innocent and as others have said have a “playing dress up” vibe. This is one of those rare occasions where the parent child relationship, personal outlook, and an era created the environment for such work.
I will note it’s been very sad to see this work used by other less than artistic minded souls as a way to get around child pornography laws…few to none could get away with doing such work today no matter the sex.
As far as images like this as a whole…we’re not in an era that can or will examine the issue mainly because it would be automatically assumed as porn no matter what by the moral majority. A shame because I think that’s lead to MORE child exploitation than ever…the underage modeling sites proved that alone.
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:25 am
I don’t know that man would be lynched. Though also controversial, David Hamilton created erotic images of pre- and pubescent girls that were lauded in the art world.
As for this woman, I echo the sentiment that publishing images of a child in something like Penthouse was exploitative, whether or not the images themselves were.
In this country we get somewhat uncomfortable when we discuss child sexuality, and I appreciate the non-reactive stance here. I was certainly a sexual being well before I was teenager, and there is indeed something very captivating about that time in a girl’s life when she is discovering the woman she will become — it’s a major transformation and as a result can be the foundation of some very powerful art.
In photography, to capture that time/transition artistically and naturally as seen in the images here and in work by Hamilton, I do not think of as being inherently exploitative. But presenting that art in a way that panders to prurient interests is.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:49 am
I have the Sally Mann book, knowing full well that if somebody ever alleged any improprieties by me against my daughter, it would be used against me in court; routinely, possession of ordinary kids’ clothing catalogs is submitted as evidence against suspected pedophiles. But this actually reveals the crux of the problem: It really has little to do with the producers of questionable content, since through the wrong eyes all content is questionable. To wit:
I was editing a home video of a beach party at my office one day. Some of the footage featured a little girl crawling around the sandcastle she was building. I wondered aloud if this footage might be a bit prurient and a coworker said, simply, “Depends on which web site it shows up on.”
That said, sexualizing the innocent is usually an awful idea and I support the laws against it (if not the usual methods of enforcing and prosecuting them).
Unfortunately, we need not pick on fringe photographers like Jock Sturges, Sally Mann, David Hamilton or Irina Ionesco; the sexualization of children is mainstream big business. Think the Bratz Bralettes furore of a couple years ago was the last we’d see of anything like that? Guess again. 2007 had its fair share as well, and even stodgy old Disney’s having a tough time keeping its 15-year-old Hannah Montana star suitably clad.
As for the unusual child-rearing strategy, I can only relate a personal story. Browsing the lovely and clever suicidegirls.com site, my wife and I stumbled across someone we knew as a little girl. Her mother is an old friend of ours, even performed the rites at our (admittedly unconventional) wedding. It was hard to reconcile the wild child on the screen with my memory of her, of course, and I asked around. Finding that our old friend played a role in developing her daughter’s new lifestyle actually made it a bit upsetting. It’s not the posing that bothered me, it was the description of her current lifestyle and proclivities (which I subsequently verified). I’m pretty sure if it were just the posing, I could cope, but it still might spoil the fun of the site for me to constantly worry about bumping into her…
But she’s an adult now, free to make her own mistakes and her own choices. I can only hope that her mother helped her go into it with open eyes. For me, that’s really what it comes down to.