Beholding Images of Picture-Perfect Fantasy

Yes, Jock Sturges does photograph blossoming young girls in the nude; and, yes, his pictures have catalyzed a heated debate about what is sacred and what is profane in such depictions. But, ironically, the photographs are not nearly as provocative as the debate surrounding them.

Sturges’ images have been (and continue to be) attacked by those on the religious right for disavowing any inhibition, shame or guilt at exposing the body, and in turn they’ve been defended by proponents of freedom of expression. An air of moralizing and politicizing hangs heavy around them, and they don’t wear well under such weight. The photographs are beautiful but bland.

Sturges has photographed in “naturist” (or nudist) communities in France and the U.S. for more than 20 years, focusing on the endlessly fascinating permutations of the developing female form. In a selection of work at Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Sturges comes across as an idealist, projecting fantasies of innocence, purity and perfection on his subjects. Not a blemish mars the skin of these young beauties, not an extra ounce of flesh detracts from their lean forms, as they recline on rocks or stride out of the sea.

Though Sturges is often discussed in the same breath as Sally Mann, his tritely composed photographs have none of the raw complexity and pained beauty of hers. They suggest little of what goes on beneath the pristine surface, for Sturges edits out the rough edges, tensions, frictions and functional necessities of life.

The work gets interesting only when it follows a single model over a length of time. Misty Dawn, for instance, appears first in a 1985 photograph as a girl of about 5 years old, a ragged but radiant waif sitting, knees to chin, on a gritty wall in front of industrial equipment. Five years later, she’s in costume as a winged fairy, a sprite; then, after another year, she peers out from behind a sheer, cocoon-like veil. Finally, in a picture from 1997, she emerges a young woman, naked and wondrous, thigh deep in a wooded stream.

Like Nicholas Nixon’s photographic chronicle of his wife and her sisters--or like our own family albums--these pictures cut to the heart of photography’s capacity to seize, retain and reorder transient moments lost to the unrelenting passage of time. The camera’s mechanical memory supplements our own, replaces it, improves on it and allows us to cut our losses.

After their notoriety has passed, Sturges’ photographs themselves may not endure the test of time. But, at their best, they do evoke its poignant passage.

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* Paul Kopeikin Gallery, 138 N. La Brea Ave., (213) 937-0765, through April 14.