Art or pornography? Celebrity photos under fire
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former f(X) member Sulli (up) and singer and actress Dohee/ Screen capture from Rotta's Instagram
A photographer who worked with various celebrities is embroiled in controversy over photos that allegedly use a pedophilia concept.
Photographer Rotta, whose real name is Choi Won-suk, recently received attention for his so-called “Lolita concept.”
His work first went viral after former f(X) member Sulli uploaded photos to Instagram that Rotta took of her last year. In the images, Sulli wears school uniform and extremely short pants.
Rotta’s other works with celebrities, including singer and actress Dohee and girl band Stellar, have the same concept.
Viewers say the images remind them of the young character in the novel “Lolita,” saying the outfits in Rotta’s pictures are often used in the Japanese version of Lolita-concept images.
The most controversial part is that some of the women, including Sulli, in his pictures hide their hands and feet. This has drawn a negative reaction that such posture presumably describes a type of pedophilia that men cut off women’s hand and foot to block any disobedience for rape.
“There’s fine line between art and pornography,” one viewer said. “However, Rotta’s work highly reminds me of pedophilia."
"I'm afraid his work will inspire imagination of pedophilia.”
But Rotta has said he is not a pedophile.
“I explained my name ‘Rotta’ comes from the word Lolita with a joke,” Rotta said in an interview with social network news service Wikitree last month. “However, it was just a joke. I don’t have a Lolita complex.
“I just want to express fluttering memories of first love I felt when I was an adolescent boy. That’s why I capture images of girls.”
He said he was much influenced by Japanese animation that captured the beauty of girls.
Some people claim Rotta's pictures inspire imagination of paedophilia. /Screen capture from Rotta's Instagram