To think the photos aren’t appropriate/too revealing for college work

[ThatsMyPenguin]

DS is 18, he’s in his second year at college doing an Art and Design course, one of the units is all photography based. He’s loving it.
As part of the unit they need to create a mini portfolio of some portraits, landscapes and still life images. There seems to be a fair amount of creative control. He wants to be a photographer so this unit is important to him.

Last night he was working on the computer downstairs and I was looking at his images (he was editing them).
He has taken some pictures of an old school friend (currently 17) in lingerie. They are quite tastefully done (I won’t post them here as like I said they seem inappropriate to me).
Some have been done to look like she is laying on a bed I think and the placement of her hands make it seem quite sexual, another is from behind and the lingerie doesn’t provide much coverage of her behind so that seems quite inappropriate. He’s taken pictures of her which aren’t revealing too, focused more on her face etc. They are much better but he is insisting he will be fine to use a combination and it’s “art”. They are well done I just don’t think it’s appropriate to take pictures like that of a 17 year old!! His college tend to display some of the work too so I’d be surprised if they allow it, DS says they are fine with it but admits they don’t know she is 17.

AIBU to say pictures of this nature aren’t appropriate considering they are for uni and she’s not 18?

I think this thread is a little OTT.

Bloody stupid teenagers do bloody stupid thing. Tale as old as time.

Thankfully it seems like they are willing to listen and sounds like they'll both learn not to take / pose for / distribute photographs of under-18s.

If you are suggesting the poster can’t spell naive, that’s what ‘ ‘ around a word generally means - that the poster knows it’s wrong but is using it anyway - in this case to quote a previous poster.

HTH.

I also said if they found out she was under 18 though the college likely would not like it.

The comment about the "probably will be allowed" was about the level of nudity in the photos. The issue wasn't the nudity it was her age. If she had been 18 the level of nudity in the photos would have been fine.

But sure leave out the bit where I said if college find out she's under 18 they likely won't like it. Which is what happened.

It’s not that they ‘won’t like it’ it’s that it’s illegal child sexual abuse which could result in serious life ruining consequences.

Do you often minimise child sexual abuse like this?

Considering that the police barely do anything about actual sexual crimes or about when far younger teenagers share nudes with each other on Snapchat I seriously seriously doubt the police would do anything at all about an 18 year old boy and a 17 year old girl taking some photos of her In her underwear and him giving her a copy of them. At most the police would confiscate the images and give the girl a lecture about taking photos in her underwear. They weren't even nudes. If she had been a few months older this would be a non issue and considering both their ages the police wouldnt do anything about this.

They have been naive to not consider that she's under 18 but this is hardly the crime of the century. As a result of them not thinking this through hes going to have to redo his project. That's the extent of the consequences that will come of this.

People are being really ott. She's 17. Not 12.

Do you often minimise child sexual abuse like this?

Woah. Woah. Woah. Take it easy. No one’s even seen the images here and no one’s in a position to say whether they’ve contravened any legislation or not. There’s a good chance they wouldn’t meet the threshold for an offence but we don’t know . All this hyperbole is not helping anyone. The OPs identified a concern and has addressed it with her son. And before you accuse me of excusing child abuse I worked in child abuse investigation for several years so I do have some experience in this field.

It's an insult to genuine victims of child sexual abuse to suggest that an 18 year old taking illegal photos of a consenting 17 year old because they're both idiots is anyway near on the same level.

A 17 year old consenually taking some photos in her underwear she was happy to take and the photographer being 18 is not a situation that has serious life ruining consequences. She was happy for him to submit them as a college project. She is comfortable with these images. There is no power play or manipulation here.

This is not child abuse. Stop minimising the seriousness of actual child abuse by acting like two teenagers of similar ages not thinking through the fact one of them was 17 when photographing an art project Is child abuse. It's rediculous.

Exactly. Really insulting.

His own age? They’re 17 and and 18 that is his own age!

It's not exactly breakthrough photography is it? It's a scantily clad female, on a bed, under the guise of minimalist....load o balls. If he wants to photograph the 'pure' natural form, there are so many other ways to do this. He needs to work on his creativity, if he can't think of better images. If he needs inspiration he should look at classical vs modern still life human forms. If he really wants to be edgy and keep purity he should think about working environments and the human body, maybe he could set up a 'gym' in the studio with male and female models using weights in leotards (or similar) to get the muscle definition. There are a myriad of other ways of portraying the human body, and he'd achieve higher marks for something actually orginal.

18 is the minimum age for porn models not 16.your ds could get in big trouble

This is not child abuse. Stop minimising the seriousness of actual child abuse by acting like two teenagers of similar ages not thinking through the fact one of them was 17 when photographing an art project Is child abuse. It's rediculous.

In safeguarding terms the sharing of consensual or non-consensual nude or semi nude images of children comes falls under child on child abuse. There is the caveat that where the images are consensual and the children are older teens of a similar age then it would be handled differently in terms of the response to the images (similarly to consensual sex between teens being handled differently).

What is clear and is in KCSIE (which applies to school and college staff) is that the creation and distribution of the images is illegal, including in situations where the images were consensually created/shared by older teens.

DS likes to be different with his art which is why I’d imagine he’s done this!
Give over... You must know there's nothing remotely different about this.

OP came here for advice because she does think they could be seen as sexual, so why are you saying she’s denying that? It’s her whole point. What she’s saying is she doesn’t think his INTENT was sexual or creepy, and being as she knows her son and you don’t, she is better placed to decide whether that is likely or not than you.
OP IS concerned and is trying to do something about it so maybe less of the theatrics and implying he forced her. You have no basis for that accusation.

He's 18. All 18 year olds on art courses believe they are making arty original comments with their art whilst making uninspiring rip offs of stuff that already exists. It's part of being an 18 year old in art school.

I think the college tutor also needs to accept some responsibility here in terms of briefing students around what is and isn't acceptable. If your son had known all of this before he started it would have stopped him wasting so much time and effort.

And this is distribution of sexual images of a child.

I agree. She cannot be expected to be seen as a child by a boy just a year older. He made a mistake and is making amends. It is really harsh calling him creepy.

@LolaSmiles
"In safeguarding terms the sharing of consensual or non-consensual nude or semi nude images of children comes falls under child on child abuse."

The images have to be "of a sexual nature" in order to be illegal. There are plenty of semi-nude and even nude images of under 18s which are not illegal as they are not deemed to be sexual in nature. Look in any clothing or swimwear catalogue for a start. There are also many sexual images which seem to get a free pass as they are "artistic" - the Virgin Killer album cover for example, and Lost Girls by Alan Moore which contains many highly sexual illustrations of under age children by the brilliant Melinda Ebbie. I'm not quite sure how artists get a free pass on this one to be honest.

Sounds like it's sorted as long as he deletes them

I know others have already said this, but if he forwards them on even to her it’s distributing child images and he can get in a whole heap of trouble which will follow him through life. Even if you are boyfriend/girlfriend under age and send you can be done.

According to the Protection of Children Act 1978 it is illegal to take/make/show/distribute/possess revealing photos of ‘children’ under 18. I think that this means he has, technically, already broken the law as she cannot under this law ‘consent’. It is separate legal concept to giving consent to have sex, which she can give at 16.

I think you need to delete/destroy the revealing photos immediately, despite how artistic they may be.

Sorry, just seen the more recent posts and note my reply above is now a bit late!

My DD took 'naked' pictures of her 17yo model as part of her college portfolio about mental health. They were actually pretty disturbing and graphic but she was allowed to use them in her exam portfolio. 1) for many of the shots the model wore coverings which were photoshopped out at editing. 2) they were in no way sexualised and 3) although permitted for her exam portfolio she was not permitted to use them for her university application portfolio.
I think that your son should take advice before he goes any further.