What is pornography?

An exhibition of artist Bill Henson's work was closed in Sydney yesterday - and was reported today as CHILD PORN "ART" RAID. But what is porn? I checked www.dictionary.com and they classify it as: obscene writings, drawings, or the like, esp. those having little or no artistic merit. Obscene gave three results: offensive to morality or decency; causing uncontrolled sexual desire; abominable, disgusting, repulsive. Okay, that probably means you need to view pornography in a wider cultural context - figuratively speaking that is. So what does Wikipedia offer? Pornography or porn is the explicit depiction of sexual subject matter, especially with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer. Now, this is not about a moral stance on pornography but rather questioning "what is pornography?". S and I were only discussing this yesterday as I went through the photos on my iPod. I came across some pics I had downloaded from the web and which I've commented on previously in this blog. There are three shots depicting that special kind of love between a man and a woman; both are naked and are shown engaged in three different forms of sexual activity. Is this porn? Possibly. But is it still porn since they are Lego figures (from The Brick Testament) rather than real people? Is it the depiction of the act rather than the players? Or is it the use to which the images are put? I certainly don't use them for sexual titillation (for a number of reasons which I won't go into here), and am not sure that anyone would, but does that matter? Is it the depiction and possible use rather than the actual use? I'm not sure. And if I can't decide over some Lego characters, how is it possible to make a hard and fast ruling about an art exhibition of photographs of naked pre-teen children? It's possibly a question of exploitation and that's certainly being investigated in the Henson case - especially as all images from the exhibition were available on the gallery's website (but have now been pulled). Hmmmm - more thought/research needed.