In the eye of the beholder / Lewis Carroll photography show raises difficult aesthetic questions
The exhibition asks us to set aside cultural reference points such as the paintings of Balthus (1908-2001), Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” the photographs of Sally Mann and the profit system’s address to children as a mass market precociously attuned to sexual innuendo.
Nickel’s essay will persuade any reader that we ought to hold this knowledge in abeyance when we look at Carroll’s pictures of children. But is it possible? Can we believe that Carroll innocently preferred female children’s company because of a guilelessness and intelligence he found too seldom in adults?
San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 2002