Anne Higonnet in Pretty babies in Eurozine says that when it comes to representing children, art and law are on a collision course and photographers are in the dock:

Art and child pornography law have been set on a collision course since the eighties. Until then, censorship laws in most western countries were on the decline. A growing cult of the child, however, reversed the trend. And that was in the era of analogue imagery. During the last decade, as digital technology has transformed visual communication, the conflict between art and law has only grown worse.

The old fear of images has found a new form of expression with the rise of digital photography, computers, image alteration software, and commercial colour printers. This gave artists the technical means to explore the imaginary worlds of children, our memories of childhood, and the fantasies we have about childhood and to sample old classics from children's literature as well as canonical images of children in the history of all visual media.

The law, which initially drew a logical distinction between pictures that proved an actual child had been sexually exploited and those that did not, collapsed with digital imagery. An imaginary person is the same as a real person. Higonnet says:

Yet despite the subjectivity of virtually all interpretation, child pornography law persists in attacking pictures, rather than in pursuing cases of actual abuse against real children. If you can prove that a photograph was made by forcing a real child to commit a physical sexual act in front of the camera, then by all means hunt down and prosecute the adults involved in those acts. Pictures could be used instrumentally as evidence, instead of becoming the crimes themselves. Prosecute actions. Let the pictures go.