On Henson

It’s been two years since Photographer Bill Henson’s exhibition featuring a naked 13 year-old girl was raided by police.
He was quickly lambasted as a child pornographer on the basis of his pictures, and quickly people began taking sides. The media expressed their disapproval, and newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd dismayed the Bonsoy drinking classes by calling the pictures ‘disgusting’ and ‘devoid of artistic merit.’

Meanwhile the artistic establishment struck back with the force of a Lucas prequel. Facebook groups sprung up demanding that ‘Philistines! Get your hands of Henson,’ and positioning Henson as some kind of artistic martyr. Eventually, charges were not laid and the chattering died down.
Soon, Henson will be officially exhibiting for the first time since the scandal. The Sydney Gallery showing his work took the precaution of having a government sensor come and examine the work. It is apparently, ‘bona-fide art’. I assume positions this exhibition closer to this picture, which was shown at a Henson exhibition over fifteen years ago which had Federal approval for exhibition, and is not at all creepy.

Vintage Henson

While I’m most vehemently opposed to censorship, I am equally opposed to including Henson in the all-embracing hyperbole that art fans tend to hurl themselves at anything denounced by the establishment. It would be a safe assumption that the controversy surrounding the last exhibition will lead to massive exposure for this one, and further unfair deification of a man who is in my opinion a fairly uninspiring artist. Here is the photo that kicked off the offensive. Is it that special? Anyone with an SLR and a lollypop could have taken it.

Fortunately, we don’t live in a country where a person can be tried purely on the basis of looking like a fiddler. If this was the case, Henson would have been strung up long ago.

Henson, who, lets face it, looks a little 'On The Roof'.

I do wish, however, that people would be tried on the basis of their work and achievement, rather than the blind footy-final bipartisanship that gallery patrons seem to employ in this country.

On the subject of the debate surrounding the pseudo paedophile imagery the most lucid argument that yes, somebody out there was probably wanking over those pictures, but to ban something purely on the grounds that someone out there would find it arousing would be a calamity of Conroyan proportions. The fact is that human sexuality, fetishism, and dysfunction are far richer, varied and perverse that most give them credit for and the elision between canonised sexuality and perversion is widespread. Anyone who has studies psychology will attest to this, as will anyone who lives in Brunswick.

Censorship encourages wowserism, hyperbole and the actual bad guys. To get the copies of Henson’s work for this post, I had to trawl some pretty remarkable pornographic websites, where they were posted next to truly dangerous pictures. I can’t imagine them finding their way there without the help of a media implosion. To drive something underground only serves for the unseemly and dangerous elements to fester. Look at the Australian Hip-Hop scene.