Suffer the little children

No genitals. No masks. Nothing to frighten the horses - or The News Of The Screws and the plod. The 150 years' worth of photographs of children that make up this exhibition are unlikely to prompt any raids by the Obscene Publications Squad. Sascha Hackel and husband Marcus Bury, co-directors of Hackelbury Fine Art, have even taken to calling it 'the unSaatchi show' and were mindful from the outset of the issues inscribed - unwittingly or otherwise - in images such as Tierney Gearson's.

'I've not anything against her work but we've got a young son and it's something we're very aware of,' says Hackel. 'I think she has said they are innocent works of her kids but the thing is the pre-programmed minds out there now where everything can have a second meaning. So we really wanted to have a show where you couldn't have a possible second thought about it - where it was just really wonderful photographs of children.'

They are wonderful, too, beautifully composed black and whites from 40 named photographers and a handful of anonymous pieces. They chart not only the maturing of technique - from the mostly posed pictures of the 19th and early 20th century through to the more candid, captured moments of the later works - but also that of children themselves. An erosion of innocence is evident in the few adolescent years separating Henri Cartier-Bresson's lad carting off two bottles of wine like the cat that got the cream (1954), Dagmar Hochov's boys caught in mid-jump against a wall (1959) and Dan Weiner's youth wielding a pipe on East 83rd Street in a way more pent-up than playful (1950).

Second thoughts, though, are possible and Hackel and Bury can no more control the meaning of these photographs than Gearson can that of hers. Take Louis Stettner's Girl Playing In Circles, Penn Station, New York (1958, pictured): where once it would simply have enchanted, now it unnerves, too, reminding one of the CCTV shots of Jamie Bulger and just how vulnerable this child is... all children are.

Les Enfants
Until May 5, Hackelbury Fine Art, 4 Launceston Place W8, Tue to Sat 10am to 5pm, free.

Tel: 020 7937 8688. Tube: Gloucester Road