Blackflash makes a hard choice, but was it the right choice?

The difficult balance between discretion and censorship, between editorial freedom and board responsibility, between the law and common sense -- these are all apparently in play at Blackflash, the Saskatoon-based photography,electronic and digital art magazine that has published a story with holes in it.

The story is about child pornography and according to an excellent summary in the Globe and Mail by James Adams, the magazine has apparently yanked seven images that were intended to illustrate the thesis. These included everything from a Robert Mapplethorpe image of a young girl to a photograph by Lewis Carroll and a "chocolate box" image of a young girl painted by Sir John Everett Millais (shown at right -- The Bridgeman Art Gallery/Getty). The latter was included to illustrate the apparent pedophilic sub-texts in Victorian art.

Hence, the holes.

The reasons given for the self-censorship are several, and include opposition by board members (some of whom resigned over the issue) and inability to find a printer who would print the issue in the face of the ambiguities of the Child Pornography Act of 2005. Where, before, a magazine could defend its editorial choices by citing "artistic merit", that defence (or protection) is now gone. Blackflash apparently asked for legal advice and was told that there was enough of a danger that some of the directors shied away from publishing the images.

Blackflash is published by Buffalo Berry Press; its managing editor is Lissa Robinson. It has been around for 23 years and has won numerous awards, including Magazine of the Year for Saskatchewan in the Western Magazine Awards. The magazine has a 9-person advisory panel, which includes former managing editor Michael Maranda.