Graham Ovenden

At one time it could have been Graham Ovenden's intention as a photographer to attempt a kind of terrestrial paradise, regained on behalf of the shade of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson who, on thinking it over in Heaven, was probably regretting the destruction of his photographs of naked little girls. But if ever it was Ovenden's self-imposed task to provide photographic confirmation of Dodgson's impassioned perception of the 'perfectly pure and lovely' bodies of little girls, he has long since covered that imaginary assignment. The photographs in the present book are not primarily emblems of innocence. Ovenden's interest is in form and mood, and some of his images have an almost 'unearthly' beauty of a kind that would have sent Dodgson reeling.