Graham Ovenden

Graham Stuart Ovenden (11 February 1943 – 9 December 2022) was an English painter, fine art photographer and writer.

Some of Ovenden's art has been investigated as possible child pornography by American and British authorities, and in 2009 he was prosecuted in the UK on a charge of creating indecent images, but he was not convicted.

Graham Stuart Ovenden was born in New Alresford, Hampshire on 11 February 1943,[1][2] into a Fabian household, attended Itchen Grammar School (1954–59) and was taught music privately by Albert Ketèlbey.

He bought a cottage on Bodmin Moor with 22 acres of land and began constructing "Barley Splatt", a neo-Gothic building.

His nude and semi-nude photographic portraits of young girls were published in the book States of Grace (Ophelia Editions, 1992).

Great Photographers of the Nude (AMPHOTO, 1987); Emily Brontë, Sturmhöhe (illustrations by Ovenden) (Carl Bertelsmann, 1981); Charles Causley, A Tribute from the Artist (Exeter University, 1987); Robert Melville, Erotic Art of the West (G.P.

Ovenden's work has also graced the covers of record albums (Malice in Wonderland by Paice Ashton Lord)[6] and books, notably the Arden Shakespeare series,[7][8][9] Sleep Pale Sister by Joanne Harris,[10] and A. N. Wilson's Dream Children.

Ovenden and his work have been the subject of broadcasts and films, including Lolita Unclothed for the series World without Walls (ITV, Channel 4, 1993), Stop the Week (BBC Radio 4, 1989), Curious Houses with Lucinda Lambton (BBC-TV, 1987), Bats in the Belfry – Home Sweet Home (ITV, 1987), Robinson Country: The Painter (ITV, 1987), Figures in a Landscape: The Brotherhood of Ruralists (BBC Radio 3, 1983), and Summer with the Ruralists, a film produced and directed by John Read for the BBC (1978–79).

[12] In 1980, Ovenden was prosecuted but found not guilty of fraud pertaining to his involvement in the production of hoax calotypes, purportedly images of Victorian street children by a photographer "Francis Hetling".

In February 1992, the U.S. Department of Justice claimed that the work depicted "sexually explicit conduct" and therefore was illegal to import, sell or own.

This was a substantial retreat from the government's initial position that the book contained numerous images which, theoretically, could be found illegal.

A hearing before Magistrate Zachary Carter was held on 28 May 1992, attended by the subject depicted in the allegedly offending image, then 18 years of age, and eminent photo-historian and critic, A. D. Coleman.

As to the image on page 54, the ACLU brief stated: "[W]hether viewed individually or as part of the entire book, Ovenden's portrait appears plainly to be a photograph with genuine artistic, not pornographic, intentions, and thus a constitutionally-protected work of art."

Ovenden himself attested in writing as follows: "Symbolically speaking, we are dealing with feelings of the heart and the human yearning for Edenic simplicity – a state of grace, as it were, where there is neither sin nor corruption.

[16] On 5 May 2000, the San Diego Public Library announced that it did not consider States of Grace (as well as David Hamilton's Twenty Five Years of an Artist) to contain child pornography and stated that both Ovenden and Hamilton are "contemporary and historically important photographers" whose work is "culturally and artistically significant" and "within the library's collection-development guidelines".

The determination was made in response to a ruling by a San Diego Superior Court judge that a man had photocopied images from those books "not for art's sake but for sexual purposes.

[citation needed] A year later, in England, some of Ovenden's photographs were confiscated by the Obscene Publications Squad from Scotland Yard but returned after a campaign by Lord Hutchinson and fellow artists Sir Hugh Casson and David Hockney.

[21] On 9 April 2010, after a five-minute hearing, the case was thrown out by the judge as two key prosecution witnesses, police officers who had searched his home three and a half years earlier, failed to appear in court.

Graham Ovenden described the police as "totally and utterly transfixed by childhood sexuality" and himself as "a controversial figure and, at the moment, a very angry old man".