Pictures of innocence : The history and crisis of ideal childhood.

Fromt he "blurb" we cite:
"The ideal of childhood innocence is perhaps the most cherished concept of modem Western culture, all the more so because it seems to be under siege. Pictures of Innocence explores the images that are the most common, the most sacred and the most controversial of our time, ranging from eighteenth-century portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds to greeting cards by Anne Geddes, from the ambiguous photographs of Lewis Carroll to those of Sally Mann.
Anne Higonnet begins by tracing the visual history of ideal childhood: the pictorial invention of childhood innocence in eighteenth-century portraits, its diffusion in nineteenth-century popular paintings and illustration, and its culmination in today's most widely practised forms of photography. Discussion then turns to the crisis in the ideal of childhood innocence. Photography has unsettled the certainties of perfect childhood; its uses and interpretations can eroticize children in a way that may or may not have been intended by the original photographer, while advertising and the entertainment media play on such ambivalences. These increasingly acute difficulties have recently provoked a dramatic reaction in the form of sweeping child pornography laws. The book ends by describing how we are at present in the midst of a radical redefinition of childhood itself, a turbulent change in fundamental cultural values inaugurated by images.
Written at an intersection between the history of ideas, popular culture, censorship and law, Pictures of Innocence will be fascinating reading for anyone who has ever questioned the way children are portrayed in our society."
Contents :
PART I : THE INVENTION OF INNOCENCE :
Pictures' Imagination ;
Chapter One : The Romantic Child ;
Chapter Two : Every Mother's Child ;
Chapter Three : A Golden Age Photography's Truth ;
Chapter Four : Innocence Inherited ;
Chapter Five : Snapshot Families ;
PART II : AN IDEAL IN CRISIS ;
Chapter Six : Through the Looking Glass ;
Chapter Seven : Private Pictures, Public Dangers ;
Chapter Eight : Photographs Against the Law ;
Chapter Nine : Knowing Childhood ;
Notes and Sources ;
Index.