The sensuality of children is more explicit in many of the other pictures. Dos Etude, San Diego, and Couces Epaules, San Diego, (30 & 31) are a pair of pictures of backs, with a dark black background. On the left, a naked figure, probably a woman, sits holding her knee to her chest, looking a little formless. We cannot see the figure’s head. This image seems only to be there in order to serve as a contrast to the one on the right, of a boy’s back. My guess is that it his son Justin, identified in other titles of photographs (such as Justin & Leo Running, 27). His head is bent down slightly, highlighting the nape of his neck, the brightest part of the picture, and his hair is a little wet. We can see the finest blond hairs on his neck. His shoulder blades are clearly defined, and his skin is so young and smooth. If we were not able to see the back of his head, we might not able to tell the gender, although his arms and shoulders are skinny in a boyish way.

Of course the relation between parents and their young children is intimate and sensual. Children need to be held, comforted, nurtured, and admired. Maxwell’s picture emphasizes the beauty of his son, even to the extent of acknowledging his son’s nascent sexuality. In our culture we have a very hard time knowing how to talk about this relation between parents and children because of our awareness of the prevalence of child abuse, and maybe also because we don’t know how to draw a line between objectifying our children and talking about the eroticism in childhood. Maxwell is clearly in a dangerous area, also explored by Sally Mann and Jock Sturges. Maxwell ventures in an even more dangerous direction than others though, because of the context of his photos of children. They are placed explicitly erotic picutres of adult women. For example, Lemons in Hand, (115), a boy’s hand holding two lemons, with his out-of-focus naked chest in the background, is just after Penny in White (113), in which Penny, head back, eyes closed, leans against a wall squeezing her nipple and her other hand on her genitals.

Some of Maxwell’s pictures of children focus on an almost abstract visual pleasure. Detail of Neck, (83), is just a boy’s chin pressed down against his chest. One’s eye is drawn to his nipple and the folds of flesh of his neck. Detail, (33), is just a boy lying naked on a bed. Again, we can’t see his eyes. Instead, we see his torso, and one is startled to see the genitals close to the center of the picture. But this image is far less sensual than Couces Epaules, San Diego — the pleasure in the viewing of Detail is more in the shapes, the unexpectedness, and the contrast in texture of the smoothness of the skin and the rumpled sheets.