Bill Henson image from Ego Magazine.
As was probably predictable, the media circus has moved on from the controversy over Bill Henson’s photographs. But at LP we try to keep focusing on stories the media is quick to forget, so this post updates our previous courage on the Henson furore. Because the discussion has died down, it may be that people are able now to engage in analysis which is more considered and less immediately coloured by the dividing lines inscribed by the “debate” in the media.
That’s certainly the case with this piece in Eureka Street from Andrew Hamilton, Jesuit Priest, ethicist, editor and educator, who has, for my money, written the most acute and concise summation of the ethical issues involved I’ve seen. Writing in the Higher Ed, Newcastle academic Kelli Fuery focuses in on what she sees as the central questions:
Art, specifically contemporary art, has often been at the centre of contentious cultural debate when it comes to categorising, containing and policing aesthetics, taste and acceptability. So why does the photography of Henson reignite this debate? What is at stake here is the anointment of the artist and the function of art within culture and society.
We know at LP that not all our commentators share our view on the Henson affair, and respect that, but for those who do, if you haven’t seen the link to the online open letter written by Alison Croggon, you can sign it here should you wish.
Miranda Devine, who started the whole thing off, now suggests - risibly - that the withdrawal of Australian forces from Iraq was designed to placate those who didn’t like Kevin Rudd’s take on Henson’s images. Yep, Miranda, that’s how defence logistics work.
I understand the latest issue of Art World, which was pulped because it featured some of Henson’s work on its cover and to illustrate a story, has now been published, and contains an interview with Bill Henson where he discusses (among other things) his relationship with the subjects of his photos. I haven’t bought it yet, but there’s an older interview online at Ego Magazine, where he again talks about his choice of teenage subjects:
The reason I like working with teenagers is because they represent a kind of breach between the dimensions that people cross through. The classical root of the word “adolescence” means to grow towards something. I am fascinated with that interval, that sort of highly ambiguous and uncertain period where you have an exponential growth of experience and knowledge, but also a kind of tenuous grasp on the certainties of adult life.
This post supercedes comments left on this one, where discussion is now closed. You can talk about any aspect of the Henson controversy here that you like, but I’d encourage people to reflect on its broader significance, now that the dust has settled (for the moment anyway). I think a lot of the previous discussion had begun to get a bit repetitive and circular.
Update: It looks as if there won’t be any charges laid against Henson in any jurisdiction.
Update #2: Alison Croggon has written another post on the Henson controversy, link rich, and those who’d like to see Hetty Johnson and David Marr in the same room talking about it can do so at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art on Thursday at 6pm.
What I can’t understand is, the thing hasn’t even been to court, yet large numbers keep calling Hensons work “pr0n”. It’s like calling Haneef a terrorist on Andrews say so, without even a look at the evidence or a day in open court for rational evaluation.
If it’s not pr0n, the only remaining category is art, hence the age of a model becomes irrelevant, as with Da Vinci, etc.
Meanwhile elsewhere, millions die as the 4 Riders of the Apocolypse run rampant.
blah!
THe National Gallery won’t be charged over their collection of Henson photos.
[”The AFP has concluded an assessment of images … at a Canberra art gallery storage facility,” an AFP spokesman said.
“On the basis of that assessment, no breaches of ACT law relating to child pornography has been established.” ]
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23816320-5005361,00.html
It is worth recalling I think that the scandalous relationship between art, pornography and naked, ambiguously erotic pubescent girls has a 20thc history (and of course a much longer one still), most notably focussed on the canonical French artist Balthus. His work, some of which makes Henson’s images looks very very tame, is quite freely available —check it out on Wikipedia. There certainly have been issues of censorship over Balthus’s images in the past but zilch over the past 20 or 30 years as far as I know. (It would be interesting to see what would happen if an Australian gallery were to present a big Balthus retrospective now like the MOMA did (without incident) in 1984.)
The difference between Henson and Balthus is, of course, that Henson’s models are figured as current minors who need to be protected and who can’t, by virtue of their age, give consent to being photographed naked, or naked in these kinds of poses. To that kind of thinking the art/pornography distinction is irrelevant. So it doesn’t matter that it can be quite easily shown that those who think that that distinction is slippery, uncertain or in the mind of the beholder are mistaken.
There’s good academic work on how child protection (like family values) is increasingly used for purposes of social control and repression. This is another example of it. Its a move that seems to be deeply embedded in anglophone neo-liberalism.
But in the end I think this affair (which will probably go nowhere since Henson hasn’t offended against the legislation as far as I can see) belongs to Australia’s long and sad history of censorship and wowserism, like, go figure, it being the only country in the world (circal 1950) to ban Christina Stead’s innocent novel Letty Fox for its description of a young girl’s sexuality.
What’s up with our ABC?
News that Henson won’t be charged carries the headline “Henson avoids charges over National Gallery photos”. Talk about giving someone a bad name.
Hetty Johnson throws in her two bob’s worth here.
Well i’m going to speak to the elephant in the room.
In view of the likely hood that Henson will not face any charges over his art, (announced today) I hope this week’s shock over the scores of men in Australia, including teachers, police, an artist and a film maker arrested for accessing (uncontroversially) child porn drives home the point that the police and child protection services work in a very fraught environment.
They don’t take possible abuse or exploitation of children lightly.
I’m pleased Henson appears not to have crossed any legal boundaries, but the prevalence of an audience of men eager to consume problematic images of children confirms my (personal) opinion i would never allow my child to be photographed in that context.
I would wager my house on the probability that most of the men caught in this sting have accessed Hensons work on the net, and gleefully added the images to their abhorant collections.
“Well i’m going to speak to the elephant in the room.”
I’d say it’s more of a rhino that just charged into the room and gored everyone without knowing what the discussion was about, but anyway…
“I would wager my house on the probability that most of the men caught in this sting have accessed Hensons work on the net, and gleefully added the images to their abhorant collections.”
I’ll see your house and raise you my shed.
I would have thought you’d go your Band’s venue, though, i guess that’s already been taken.
Yeah, it’s not really worth wagering now.
So no charges are going to be laid against Henson. His photographs are harmless. It was all a distasteful media beat up jumped on by the disgusting Hetty J, Karl Stepanovich, our PM, (who is vaguely trying to wriggle out of it and re-establish his civil liberties qualifications again on Channel 9), Morris Iemma (whose reputation for truthfulness and avoidance of spin and jumping on populist bandwagons is very well known in NSW. Not.)
The very least all these people can do is publicly apologise to Bill Henson and admit they have wickedly traduced his good name. Bet they won’t, though.
Hope he sues the whole damn lot of them for defamation. I would.
Okay, so the Federal Police have decided the Henson images in the National Gallery don’t breach the child pornography laws. Can’t the Hetty Johnstons of the world undestand this, instead of vilifying artists? I have to fly off to work, but suffice to say that article of hers makes me furious. How dare she make a judgement that his photos are solely produced for commecial gain. When this finishes, like Paul Burns, I hope Henson sues the arse off everyone involved in this farce.
And of course we know child pornography is rife, but Henson’s work isn’t child pornography. There may well be some of Henson’s images on their hard drives. And there may well be some Anne Geddes images as well. I’d be very happy for her stuff to be banned for aesthetic resons alone.
meant - not jumping on populist bandwagons. (I think.)
Paul Burns wrote:
Appalling isn’t it. Stephen Colbert (US funny faux conservative) makes a lot of laughs out of the conservative impulse to “think with the gut” and Rudd’s half-back-down to the chief censor this morning was far more revolting than any Henson picture.
In other news, Australia still has a Chief Censor?
ABC headline, hat tip to Zoot:
“Henson avoids charges over National Gallery photos”.
Real world translation:
“NSW police decide not to make bigger tools of themselves”.
Will NSW authorities compensate Henson and his gallery for the commercial costs of the down-time on his exhibition?
SC
P*eder*sts do many legal things. We can’t stop all of them.
SC’s point is a serious one, however. The son of an acquaintance of mine was a schoolboy rower. Pictures of his crew were discovered on a website in company with stock, commercial pictures of pouting catamites.
The rowing pictures were no different to those to be found in any Public School Annual Magazine. Yet the context in which they were shown was threatening and upsetting to their unwitting subjects and to their families.
I guess the internet is the most powerful megaphone ever invented to amplify the furtive murmurings of obsessionals.
Hatty’s arguments is obscene: Because Henson’s images are of a naked child it therefore follows that he is focusing on sexual themes. She then quotes Henson’s interview where he says that he is interested in this transitional stage of human development and therefore concludes he is interested only in the sexual aspect. Hence pervert. I instead understood him as interested in all aspects of transition from childhood to adulthood such mental, physiological, emotional not just the sexual and in that sense he has done what artists have always done ie. use the human body as a metaphor.
‘I guess the internet is the most powerful megaphone ever invented to amplify the furtive murmurings of obsessionals.’
You talkin about Hetty Johnson or the p*eder*sts?
Thanks for the anecdote Katz..
My central awkwardness has never been around the art as p-orn (and i challenge y’all cto backcheck all my posts on this - i just did) but rather the contxt of creation of the pics, the audience for the images and the ongoing wellbeing of the children.
Yes, the internet has changed things.
My ambivalence remains.
SC @ 6
From today’s Australian :
Doesn’t sound much like Henson’s work to me.
I take Katz’s point at 14 however.
Kim, thanks for posting the link to the Andrew Hamilton article at Eureka Street. I agree, a really nuanced discussion of the issues at stake. And thanks for continuing to pursue the thread of this issue here, as well.
Nick - whats your point?
SC: Keelty’s description of the nature of the images seized doesn’t support your suggestion that these men were accessing Henson’s work.
No doubt it’s possible that they downloaded his photographs - there were apparently in the realm of 100,000 seized - but in the context of genuinely horrific and abusive images, Henson’s work seems pretty mild, to say the least. Keelty’s description puts into relief what sort of issues of abuse the police would be tackling if they weren’t spending their time doing the circuit of the state galleries.
Your comment seems to imply that his works should be seen in the same arena as this truly abusive material. As Katz’s anecdote illustrates, all sorts of images can be construed as sexual by the viewer, but this doesn’t mean that we should tar their creator by association.
See this post for a link to an article on the actual web behaviour of people accessing child abuse material which is based on what police who’ve investigated it say:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/06/06/child-abuse-material/
The picture painted is a lot different from what we usually imagine based on media reports, and I would suggest as well implies that Hetty Johnson really doesn’t understand how this phenomenon works.
Word. I think there’d be a very good case for suing Miranda Devine et al. It wouldn’t be very difficult to establish that Henson’s reputation has been damaged.
This needs clarifying: the National Gallery images are the ones examined by the Australian Federal Police in Canberra from the National Gallery collection.
Those images have nothing to do with the images seized from the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Paddington by the NSW Police (other than prompting the AFP to rock up to the ANG to examine the collection). There has yet to be an official determination on the images that were to be exhibited in Paddington.
I’ll be surprised if the NSW Censor finds differently from the Chief Censor though.
tigtog, it’s being reported that the DPP won’t be proceeding in NSW:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/henson-photo-not-porn-says-censor/2008/06/05/1212259014096.html
I think it is unfortunate that Hetty Johnson, who has a record of positive involvement in public life, has taken a laudable principle and pursued it in an unbalanced and single-minded way to the point of putting herself at odds with so many people who ought to be her natural allies on the basic issue of child abuse. Her involvement in this affair reminds me unpleasantly of the generally laudable Fred Hollows’ ill-considered intervention in the debate on HIV-AIDS.
Thanks, Mark. I hadn’t caught up with that. It’s about what I expected though. Still, it is only the NSW Classification board that has ruled on images distributed in the media. So far no official Censor’s ruling on the images from the Paddington gallery, unlike the official Censor’s ruling on the images from the National Gallery. I doubt it will be any different from the ruling in Canberra.
tigtog, I think there’s a little bit of confusion here. As I understand it, the censors only come into play with regard to material that’s posted online, and that’s a federal responsibility. I may be wrong, and lack the time to go back and read all the articles right now, but I think the images originally posted on the Roslyn Oxley9 website have been rated “PG”.
Nick ” Keelty’s description of the nature of the images seized doesn’t support your suggestion that these men were accessing Henson’s work.”
So these men ONLY view hard core stuff is that what you are saying?
Nick “No doubt it’s possible that they downloaded his photographs - there were apparently in the realm of 100,000 seized - but in the context of genuinely horrific and abusive images, Henson’s work seems pretty mild, to say the least. ”
Obviously.
Nick “Keelty’s description puts into relief what sort of issues of abuse the police would be tackling if they weren’t spending their time doing the circuit of the state galleries.”
This is not an either/or debate.
Nick “Your comment seems to imply that his works should be seen in the same arena as this truly abusive material.”
If that is your understanding you misread my comment.
Nick “As Katz’s anecdote illustrates, all sorts of images can be construed as sexual by the viewer, but this doesn’t mean that we should tar their creator by association.”
Care to point out where i tar Henson?
I’ve raised this here before, but you son’t seem to be familiar with ‘Spiritual America’, the naked pics of a 10 year old Brooke Shields taken with her mums permission by Garry Gross, and appropriated by Richard Prince now on display at major galleries in the USA, AND available on Ebay?
Despite Shields later objection to the images, the Court overturned an earlier injunction on the grounds that children cannot break a contract signed by a parent or guardian.
Thats where (just some of) my ambivalence lays.
sc, have you read the New Matilda article?
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/06/06/child-abuse-material/
It reports on evidence from police and researchers on web viewing of images of children in sexual contexts, as opposed to speculation about what goes on.
From Crikey:
Johnston (who didn’t return Crikey’s call before deadline) accepted donations from adult industry companies Club X, Adultshop and Gallery totalling more than $4,000 for her Senate campaign in the 2004 election.
Keep ‘em innocent up to the age of sixteen, but then you can go for it!
Eep.
sc, a counter to Brooke Shields would be Jodie Foster, who played a prostitute when she was 12. She was the original model for a famous image selling suntan lotion. This was of little girl having her pants pulled down by a dog, to reveal a bare bum. Impossible to do now. She speaks about how much she loved acting as a child and how safe and comfortable she was always made to feel.
Obviously, both of these responses are completely valid. My point is that in our vigilance against abusive situations we’re in danger of banishing images of children and adolsecents from the public realm. Under what circumstances is it valid to make an image of a child or an adolesecent?
Tigtog suggested on another thread that those images could be sequestered until the kids are old enough to give consent. I think this has great appeal ethically. But the problem, which I pointed out, was that then there would be no films or television produced with children in them, due to the financial uncertainty. This seems to me the logical conclusion of theese sorts of arguments which make the production of images so fraught as to make it almost impossible.
You would never give permission for your children to appear in such photographs. Fair enough. The parents of the children in Henson’s photos made a different decision. Also fair enough.
Mark, the article you linked to specifically referred to the NSW Classification Board ruling on images of Henson’s photos with black bars etc, and as to images from the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery, so far only the one image that was on the invitation. If they’ve ruled on the rest of the images either from the gallery website or from the seized photos in the exhibition, then I can’t find it.
The multiple bodies that can issue rulings in this case combined with the multiple investigations do make it all rather confusing.
I thought the photos had been returned to the gallery and the exhibition was going to proceed as originally envisaged, tigtog?
Tigtog, my reading of that link is that that the NSW Police are advising the DPP that there is no case to answer for. It then refers to the Classification Board and their separate ruling. But it is complex and I may have read it wrongly.
Mark - yup and commented on your other thread.
Fine - my opinions have been influenced by my experiences with the very same men mentioned on that thread - both professionally and personally.
Hetty’s rhetoric is painful.
It’s a ‘healthy debate’, and intent ‘is always going to be a matter of opinion’.
But since they ‘of course, believe’ Henson did the work to ‘to satisfy his own purpose’ of achieving ‘economic gain and notoriety’…
(noticable lack of any evidence at this point to support their ‘opinion’)
…next stop ‘makes it a case of sexual commercial exploitation’.
(sorry Hetty but if you want to be taken seriously, you might also want to get your words around the right way - that would be ‘commercial sexual exploitation)
The photos have not yet been returned in the latest news that I am reading, although it appears that police have indicated that they will be returned in light of the advice they have received from the DPP (that no prosecution would succeed).
As to what the Classification Board has been looking at:
They classified that image, which was the photo on the gallery’s invitation to the exhibition, as PG, which strikes me as entirely appropriate. They can’t classify the actual photos in the gallery though - outside their ambit.
tigtog,
This article claims
“The works were expected to be returned to the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery, police said.
No charges will be laid against the gallery.”
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23819320-2,00.html
SC@29
With respect, to some extent it is an either/or issue - the various police forces will have spent a small fortune attending to this controversy, and I would argue that those resources could have been put to much better use. You’re right that it’s not an either/or debate, but the point I was making was with regard to police resources, which are, obviously, finite.
On re-reading your earlier comment, I agree that you didn’t set out to tar Henson - my apologies that my comment suggested that you had. But then, I’m not sure what the implications are of the images potentially having been downloaded by consumers of child pornography (or ‘child abuse material’, following the NM article). Again, I’d refer to Katz’s anecdote: the way in which images are ‘consumed’ has a complicated relationship to their circumstances of production, and there’s no straightforward reason why people’s taking sexual pleasure - however depraved - from images out of context should influence our attitude to their producer - is there?
I agree with you that the issue is an ambivalent one, and very complex. Given that the legal case is a non-starter, we’re left with ethical and critical questions. I think the Andrew Hamilton article addresses these very well.
(And no, I’m not familiar with the ‘Spiritual America’ photographs you mention, and thus can’t comment in relation to them. But obviously it’s another jurisdiction and the legal issues surrounding consent will be different.)
Here’s the latest latest news. The police are now saying the photos will be returned to the gallery.
Now I wait for the calls to change the legislation so those porn loving artists can’t sneakily corrupt our children.
Wonder how much coverage this’ll get in the MSM…
Hetty Johnston’s strange bedfellows in Crikey.
Hetty politically funded by the porn industry.
(taking a punt this article is available to non-subscribers)
or to the source….
Porn helped fund Hetty Johnston’s Senate bid
Fine: In some ways, the idea that people should discuss whether the legislation is adequate seems fair enough to me (though perhaps not in the terms that you put it!). There’s clearly an important ethical discussion to be had around these issues (and being had, however imperfectly, at the moment). It might arise from that discussion that the law surrounding these issues should be amended, at least for purposes of clarification. It seems to me that no-one has been well-served by the law in this case - not campaigners for the rights of children (rational, hysterical or otherwise), nor Bill Henson, nor any of the galleries involved.
But I’m not a lawyer, so far be it from me to suggest how things might be improved. Still, worth considering, perhaps, though whether the issues are too subtle for the ‘blunt instrument’ of the law to deal with.
And I have to admit, in the current climate of outrage and vilification, I wouldn’t be optimistic about the results.
After being one of the few media outlets to blur the face of the model in Henson’s work from the outset, today ABC News includes the photo with her face clearly visible. Do they suddenly think that because the pictures have been cleared by prosecutors and classification authorities that her privacy rights don’t apply?
Hetty needs to fall on her sword RIGHT NOW. I’m in total shock that anyone purporting to represent victims of child sexual abuse could possibly take money from the pron industry.
Those wondering what I’m on about might want to do some reading about the child sexual assault, hyper-sexualisation and the connection to pron. Estimates suggest anywhere up to 90% of pron ‘actresses’ were victims as youngsters. This means that pron is basically a continuation of the abuse.
Hetty has permanently damaged herself and other child sexual abuse advocates. WHAT AN IDIOT!!!
Alex , agreed.
That does surprise me about Johnson. I understand the argument about the p..n industy being seen to distinguish itself from CSA, but this kinda brings up some of the same objections i have to the Saudi’s funding poor old Griffith’s Islamic study centre.
The old question of whether the ends justifies the means.
If you are interested in this debate and you live in Sydney, you may be interested in attending a public forum which has been organised by Watch on Censorship and the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA).
Art Censorship: The Bigger Picture is on next Thursday 12 June from 6pm to 8pm at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
The forum will feature a panel of speakers from diverse perspectives including Hetty Johnston, Clive Hamilton, Julian Burnside, Ian Howard and a representative from the gallery sector (TBA). The evening will be MC’d by Margaret Pomeranz and the discussion chaired by David Marr. There will be plenty of time for questions and answers.
This is a free event sponsored by Frankel Lawyers. All welcome.
More info on the NAVA website: http://www.visualarts.net.au.
http://www.rootsandleaves.com/Emmabelle/EsteeMartin/Kevin Rudd.jpg
Tig tog, that is a marvellous photograph of a sulphur crested cockatoo as header for your posts. Excellent taste indeed!
To an earlier comment about suing Devine. Media Watch and others have mentioned the role the Shockjocks also played in this.
I despise Devine, who to me is just a pathological liar, meglomaniac and troublemaker. Like the shockjocks.
The press and media need to straightened out every time they do cheap beatups for ratingsd or circulation and as diversionary practice in relation to real world issues.
And a lot of really dirty-minded people out there need to get their minds above their navels for five seconds.
Hetty is a grade 1 Hypocrite with this comment.
[She says she can not understand why anyone would have a problem with her decision to accept the money because she says there is no link between adult pornography and child abuse.
“I wouldn’t associate myself with anybody who I believed was a threat to children,” Ms Johnston said.
]
http://www.abcscience.net.au/news/stories/2005/03/30/1333989.htm
She has completely lost any credability she had as an advocate for Child Sexual Abuse with this episode.
Hetty on the charges not bein laid.
[But high-profile anti-child abuse campagner Hetty Johnston, from the Bravehearts group, says it is a dark day.
“This is a big green light for the commercial sexual exploitation of our children,” she said.
“There was money exchanged so that this child could pose nude as a model to take these photos. Those photos are then sold. That is commercial sexual exploitation.
“That we can’t prosecute that in this country is an absolute disgrace.”]
http://www.abcscience.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/06/2267360.htm
How does she know that money was exchanged? My understanding is that hte models receive a gallery standard print for their work.
I don’t know if there is a link between child pornography and adult pornography. Does anyone have any research on this?
There is a big difference between a painting - and a photograph. A photograph is of real people, paintings come from the artist’s mind. The fact that Bill Hensen’s painting have been found OK, is a sign of the times. They are not nice photos and in time to come the subjects in these photos could have a change of mind, and being under age at the time of the snaps, sue the photographer well and truly. Hope they do.
Camille, you realise what you just said? You might want to re-read your statement.
Painters use models too or didn’t you realise that…
And since the photographs were found to be ‘OK’, what’s the basis for suing? By your logic, any child could sue any photographer for any photo, once they come of age.
Nick (avatar-less)
Yes, painters do use models. Are the models underage? The argument here is the photographs are not nice and the children are underage, and in time may be embarrassed by them, and the fact that these photos have been used for public display too! I personally think the whole saga is awful, and don’t wonder there is a public outcry! The usual family photographs are not of that nature. There have been incidents where film has been sent in for processing and the authorities notified of some of the photos. I just don’t think we want that stuff around.
Yes, of course the models are underage - when they’re paintings of underage models. Or do you imagine painters paint 18 year olds to look like 12 year olds?
Your argument was that there’s a big difference between a painting and a photograph. Since it’s not that difficult to paint a photo-realistic portrait (it’s been done a few million times or more) - what’s the big difference?
In other news, I see on Lateline pr0n industry spokespeople have been backing Hetty to the hilt tonight.
I heard twice, once on radio and then on TV, that when the pictures are returned to the gallery viewing will be by appointment only.
Stupid bedfellows.
‘If I was to take similar photos and display them in any of our *********.com retail stores, albeit only to adults, coming through the door, they would definately be considered child-pr0n, and here in Western Australia I’d be jailed for that.’
Who’s not going to be aware there’s a difference between an art gallery open to the public of all ages, and a s0x shop. He says albeit like he’s already considered that what he’s saying is a nonsense.
Intent and public benefit - Hetty’s points of legal debate/interpretation - thrown right out the window.
At the rate she’s going, Hetty Johnston is the single person who could actually swing mainstream public opinion around back to front on this issue.
And still (I think) no word from on her on the ‘real’ child abuse photos.
camille:
Great argument. Let’s ban ‘Funniest Home Videos’ on that basis. (On second thoughts, let’s ban it on aesthetic grounds).
(I didn’t mean to leave ‘real’ apostrophised by the way…was going to say something else)
[Stupid bedfellows.
‘If I was to take similar photos and display them in any of our *********.com retail stores, albeit only to adults, coming through the door, they would definately be considered child-pr0n, and here in Western Australia I’d be jailed for that.’]
And here is the lateline story with that stupid comment.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2267859.htm
[At the rate she’s going, Hetty Johnston is the single person who could actually swing mainstream public opinion around back to front on this issue.]
Agreed, she is the Maude Flanders of Australia.
And here is Hetty’s full comments on the Henson Desicion.
She is delusional !
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/6/6/2267661.htm
I suppose my only question on this would be, was the message so important that such a delicate taboo had to be violated?
If so, what exactly was the message? It seems the only discussion to come out of this display is whether he’s a pervert or an artist.
From the smage
Laughing stock indeed, for her input and Rudd’s et al. Not for the outcome.
Chris Morris’ Brass Eye “Paedogeddon” special part 1/3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7jVnrfoZD8 - the most complained about show in the history of British television.
Chris Morris’s Paedogeddon has been to the forefront of my mind as I witnessed this whole thing. (Cake - about an allegedly new street drug - is worth a look too). Surely no one has more effectively skewered how the media opportunistically beats up moral panic.
At the end of this, I just feel incredibly sad. Henson is of course within his rights to sue, since his reputation and integrity has been irretrievably sullied, but if he is wise he won’t. There is, of course, the precedent of what happened to Oscar Wilde; an example of how a prurient society destroyed an artist. Wilde, one of the greatest writers and most subtle minds of his time, wrote nothing of note after he came out of jail. And the pro-life, anti-gay (and anti-Harry Poetter) Christians, as well as our Hetty, are making very hostile threats to use this case as a lever, presumably to agitate the change the law. I fear that this is by no means over.
I have a strange feeling this is far from over. Given Ken07’s “I will let the law decide but my views remain unchanged” I think he knows he has muck on his face. The reason why it will not go away is because Hetty just will not stop.
I have had grave doubts about Hetty Johnston for years now and the Bill Henson affair has certainly confirm many of them. There are a growing number of sexual abuser survivors who are speaking out now asking what the hell this woman is on.
Please forgive me, slight OT rant…
Also, not every developmental psychologist agrees with her views. She seems to parade this bizzare notion that young people are absolutely sexually latent until coming of proper age. Well, I do not remember my teenage years like that, and I would have thought for healthy sexual development we should be talking about young people’s sexuality openly in all its gory difficulties instead of sweeping it under the carpet. That is something completely aside from child protection. Acknowledging sexualitiy in the young does not imply avaiability for adult use! This is just demented thinking! I think there is a very clear distinction here.
By way of example, a close friend of mine who is gay told me that he “knew” he was gay at about six years old. Now he did not have the language to express it, he also knew it was taboo (this was a kid growing up in the 70s). And when he hit puberty it was just so aweful for him as a result of those feelings being amplified by hormones etc. No support for him, nothing. Now, I do not quite know what to make of that but, judging on things I have read my friend’s experience are by no means unusual. I would think it awful if our society took a Victorian era approach to this and pretended it did not exist.
Our society needs a safe but brutally honest way of being able to discuss sexuality issues facing the young in saftey.
returning from OT land slightly…
I am also uncomfortable that a victim support organisation doubles as a political lobby group whose agenda seems to be getting broader.I certainly hope that funds that are supposed to be directed to victim support are going that way instead of towards campaigning, now that she is campaigning outside her orginal charter.
It is an interesting observation that she has had very little to say about Centruion. I think the police should let her view the evidence they are collecting and then she might actually see the diference. The AFP person who was interviewed seemed to know the difference but I have low expectations of the police.
Thinking about development and transition. It has been said before by many people but Henson photographs deing with the transition out of childhood real exemplify just how uncomfortable everyone really is with sexuality in the young. Now way that I can see that he even is putting sexuality under the microscope. He is just letting the body be itself and let it tell its own stories–in the dark and shadow lands.
This will not end nicely.
There are lots of different agendas tied up in this. I think your notion of letting the body tell it’s own stories is half right. Like all good art, the pictures ask us about our own story and that is where the Hetty space begins.
I’m still quietly boggling about the fact that this entire thing is a result of three official complaints.
The temporal contiguity of the Henson affair and the nation-wide child porn arrests creates an interesting contrast and comparison. A couple of observations:
1. Hetty Johnson is still popping up in the media re Henson,saying things such as, “If the law is so pathetic it can’t protect our children, it needs to change.” I haven’t heard her say anything yet about the massive crackdown on Internet child porn - has anyone heard a peep out of her on this matter?
2. The fact that Queensland police felt the AFP may have jumped the gun and given some suspects a chance to destroy evidence makes me worry that Henson-induced pressure to appear to be doing legitimate child protection work affected operational decisions - I hope that wasn’t the case.
[1. Hetty Johnson is still popping up in the media re Henson,saying things such as, “If the law is so pathetic it can’t protect our children, it needs to change.” I haven’t heard her say anything yet about the massive crackdown on Internet child porn - has anyone heard a peep out of her on this matter?]
Yep, she’s been strangely silent on the matter - I wonder if it’s because those already caught in the net being teachers and police officers, do not fit preferred profile of the average kiddie perv merchant ?
Alison, your passion for art and free expression comes through clearly. Indeed, an uncertain pain comes through as well.
May I have a shot at taking away your sadness, to replace it with a few thoughts to move forward? Won’t say this will cheer you up, but as attempt to raise a possibility from the line of your thinking, here goes..
It will be about how confusion from this place can bear upon the things you are concerned about.
This comment is to take a moment here to attempt to deal with the art, in brief and in supposition. I’m no connoisseur of Henson’s work - and I doubt many commenters on this issue are, so it’s given really as observation for what it’s worth, and to add an imaginative scenario that might at least be of interest.
How about this? Let’s say there’s, what, 18 months of investor interest in Henson’s work after this mass swamping of media, within an ‘art world’ as you may hold dear. This includes interest of a cautionary nature to further investment value. That is, ‘Henson’ has now been elevated within the art/investor dynamic which places the work in hot new realms. Let’s hold that possibility a moment.
Next up we have the question of Henson’s artwork itself. Where has the work moved to? What more has the artist said?
Let’s be aware here that modern printing oozes into the frame a luscious silky gorgeousness which can take photography as a medium into rich new levels of visual power. I’ve seen results from one of only two professional machines in Australia which blow you away, and these would be far from top range available. Depths and subtleties of inmagery available are, simply, breathtaking.
Of course, Henson has captured qualities of light and subtlety which at times stands the work alone. This comment is not to deny that.
It is fair, however, while probably being contentious in some ways, to say also that the ‘moment’ Henson is capturing is not something he alone can do or is remarkably able to do: the nether world between the child and the adult. We know what he has said he wants to achieve. Take the clothes off an adolescent, put them in front of a camera, and I’d suggest those goals can be readily achieved.
Again, this is not to take away from what Henson has achieved artistically - but what it is to say is that once the investor/art flourish has passed, if he were to put out the same imnagery yet again, with them going nowhere else, saying nothing more, ‘he’ll’ be ripped down in shreds. Can you hear the cry: “Enough!”
Indeed, Alison, it’s not over yet. One of the dangers I would suggest, while you are so beautifully taken with your concerns, is that if this possible scenario as outlined here comes to pass, then the matters involved will be terribly confused because of this particular work which has already said as much as it can (according to what the creator wants of it).
Can we fairly expect there to be a flourish about Henson’s work for a while? After that, what then? More of the same, but for the value of technologies? In two, three, five years’ time… more naked adolescents, vulnerable between child- and adulthood? (And what does this do for the society you imagine, when art is supposed to enlighten, after years of going nowhere else with it?)
I may be very wrong here. Henson may well go on to deliver something more. But these latest works haven’t done so, after so many years, and there’s nothing from the work to say he ever will. Will the realisation of this “going nowhere”, finally, be confused with censorship or some other affront? Would such realisation of limitation be confused with a reputation sullied? Would such affront be confused as the “destruction of an artist”?
Hey! Didn’t women get pregnant at 13 & 14 in Shakespeare novels?…and during LIFE’s shortcuts when we didn’t have much time? Well, we’re beyond that PACE now. So, let’s give the younguns TIME to EXPLORE. Like an ALIEN EMPIRE would say to us if it arrived w/ hundreds of years at its disposal.
Don’t know about YOU. But those younguns don’t seem affeared of anything but that which leaves them ALONE & COLD.
I saw LIGHTS land at AIRPORTS. From a afar…on hills…& close as a WORKER.
If someone took a photo…would I seem NAKED? EXPLOITED? Afraid? Naive? Vulnerable? Old enuff?
Do YOU…feel that way.
Are YOU CALLING? At the Baghdad Cafe…? Or in Texasland?
Wide screen…now on TV…who wins…& loses…and buys buys, distracts, distracts… in the GAME?
TIME…
Well no cause he didn’t write any. However from one of his plays:
Romeo and Juliet
ACT I, Sc 2
Bit naff rhyming ‘made’ with ‘made there Bill but well said enough.
Amazing. Now that the NSW DPP has decided Henson has no case to answer Peter Garrett gets a sudden attaqck of moral courage and says that the courts are no place to decide questions of art. Piss weak, as usual.
Meaning: I insist that this is pornographic even tho’ it isn’t. This debate has highlighted the strengths and weakness of the arguments of religious social conservatives and those who oppose them. Throughout this debate the argument has always been: it’s pornography, of course it’s pornography. Because I say it is.
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It occurred to me that these people weren’t just tarring Henson, they were tarring me! I’ve been a fan of Hensons for than two decades. That means, according to this argument, that I’ve been a consumer of child pornography. Every time I check out his books or visit his shows that’s what I’m doing.
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But the funny thing is that my reception of this stuff is completely different from my reaction to pornography artistic and otherwise. There are sculptures in the NGV that are pornographic most definitely. These are of the late-19th early 20th century variety of neo-classical marbles. Y’know the Spring Sprite meets Pan featuring some ve