Bringing the issue of trust into focus

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/04/2015 (3827 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s brand is built on artistic excellence, and Bruce Monk’s dance photography figured prominently in that brand. Indeed, his images, and the image of a venerated, 75-year-old institution, have become inextricably linked.

And therein lies the problem for the RWB.

While one of the world’s great dance companies is facing allegations from former students that Monk, their instructor, took nude photos of them as teens in the late 1980s and early ’90s, one didn’t necessarily need a Maclean’s cover story to know Monk also takes the kind of photos that don’t end up in promotional brochures.

A Google image search for ‘Bruce Monk photography’ took all of 0.27 seconds to reveal photos of young women in various states of undress, and many of them in ballet costumes. All could have been viewed on the Internet for years. In fact, prints of these photos — including one of a completely nude young woman in ballet slippers — have appeared in online art auctions as recently as 2014.

It’s true many dance photographers have nudes in their portfolios. But how many of those dance photographers are also dance teachers? More problematic, how many dance photographers have taken nude photos in the very school in which they teach?

Sarah Doucet, one of the former students named in the Maclean’s piece, repeated in an email to me the photos of her in question were taken on school property. Another woman named in the piece emailed me a screen grab of a photo that appeared on Monk’s website from 2002 to 2007. In the photo, a young woman is posing in what she said was the RWB’s boiler room.

In an interview Friday, RWB executive director Jeff Herd maintained no one had approached the school with allegations against Monk prior to this year’s investigation, and staff had only seen Monk’s photos of nudes after it was alerted to the investigation — which is baffling, considering how available they are.

Herd says no one in the photos that are accessible online were identified as being from the RWB.

And while it’s not known if the young women in Monk’s nude and semi-nude photos are students, the images raise red flags, especially considering Monk’s access to impressionable, vulnerable girls as a teacher.

The allegations raise all manner of philosophical questions about the intersection between instructor and artist. Taking nude photos of a consenting, of-age dancer or model is not illegal — but what happens when a photographer who takes photos of nude young women was also entrusted by the school to instruct young women? In the ballet world, the body is an instrument, viewed in an artistic context. It’s possible that even if the RWB was aware Monk took nude photos in general, it wouldn’t necessarily have given the organization pause.

Is that a problem?

“That’s something we have to struggle with. If he takes nude photography and is a dance instructor and never the two shall mix, what do we do? If someone is a great photographer and the kids want to get a headshot, is that wrong? We will really have to look into it,” Herd said.

A Google image search for ‘Bruce Monk photography’ took all of 0.27 seconds to reveal photos of young women in various states of undress, and many of them in ballet costumes

Bottom line: Monk may be an artist, but his responsibility as a teacher was to his students. That he may have endangered them, or broken that trust, is appalling. The allegations in the Maclean’s piece are damning, and they certainly paint a portrait of a man who exploited his position of trust and authority.

“A photographer who works for us as an instructor who would not ensure the safety of the individual, that’s the whole crux of our judgment here,” Herd said. “That would be totally inappropriate. It doesn’t matter who solicited the photo. To me, it’s a judgment issue I find tough to overcome.

“If everything we’ve heard is true, I’m shocked at his judgment.”

For the moment, the RWB better hope no one within the organization heard something about Monk and, for whatever reason, chose not to disclose it. Because as we have seen in far too many cases in the recent past, it will be the RWB facing judgment.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca