Photography and Censorship: The Photographs and Ideals of Jean Straker

Abstract

This article is concerned with ongoing research on the photographer Jean Straker. Straker was active as a photographer from 1944 to the late 1960s, at a time when the mores of British society were undergoing a reexamination. Straker's practice and ideals were concerned with the representation of the female form and, importantly, that people should have the freedom to see this type of photography. He founded the Visual Arts Club in 1951 in Soho Square, London, which enabled him, through lecture demonstrations and the sale of his work, to pass on his ideals to others. The club provided the surroundings for other like-minded people to draw and photograph the female form as an art form. Straker was successful with his photography, selling prints to a national and international clientele. With the passing of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, the 1960s saw a number of trials; Straker came into conflict with the authorities, resulting in a number of appearances in court defending his photography and ideals of personal freedom. That he was a knowledgeable and eloquent defender of the views he held and that he, like others in his position in the arts, was able to put forward reasoned arguments that what he was doing was not obscene or likely to deprave, but was in fact art, did not stop the state from prosecuting him. To view Jean Straker as a little-known and peripheral figure would be to underestimate his contribution to British photography and the ongoing struggle against state censorship in the arts.