I "borrowed" Dreams of a Young Girl from my parents when I moved out. You know, just to make sure that this beautif…I "borrowed" Dreams of a Young Girl from my parents when I moved out. You know, just to make sure that this beautiful collection of hazy, dreamy photographs of young girls would get dusted off once in a while. David Hamilton, ever obsessed with that brief phase in which children turn into women, that short-lived moment of unawareness of their own beauty, peaked in the 70's. Those were the days of Studio 54, Emmanuelle and (Dutch blockbuster) Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight), which matched his photography perfectly. And all he seemingly needed was natural light and a dab of petroleum jelly on his lens to capture that soft-focused effect in his sepia-tinted work: photographs of barefoot beauties in flowery fields, with slender bodies and budding breasts poking through their white cotton lace summer dresses. They made him world-famous, his books sold hundred thousands of copies. Back then, posters of his girls in their large cotton panties, sharing a canopied bed to take a nap, decorated the rooms of not only teen boys, but families too. For a long time, no one considered his soft-focus erotica indecent or seriously inappropriate. But that would change.In the early 80's, Hamilton's art got out of fashion and later, when the morality police started running rampant and that dreaded paedophilia-word entered the scene, his photography suddenly turned into something edgy and risque (forbidden even in some countries), and raised awkward - but perhaps necessary - questions as; are Hamilton's girls women or are they still children? Is it okay to publish Lolita-ish nudity? And even though we now consider and know that it's not quite so innocent to eroticise young girls, does that make Hamilton's art less beautiful? Oh, to gain back a little of the seemingly simplicity of the 70's! If a dab of …