Bill Hensen banned photographer live address now

While some over-the-top types may have "vilified" him as a "child pornographer", and while the public hoo-ha may have caused various weak-at-the knees types to withdraw his work from public display, he was not "banned" nor was his work. In the article you link to:
Police threatened to lay charges but eventually decided not to.
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Don't get me wrong: during the ensuing (and mostly artificial) discussion of whether Mr Henson (not "Hensen") had "crossed the line" I concluded fairly early on that whatever "the line" is, he'd not so much as approached it let alone crossed it. And I found the idiot populist beat-up that surrounded the whole thing to be precisely that. The coppers and Deputy Public Prosecutor seem to have come to similar conclusions.

So let's not make more of it than it was. (I imagine his publicist has a different view of this.)

...Mike
 
This whole event has been a media circus from start to finish with the odd quip thrown in by the occasional less than broad minded politician. Our Kevin got his just deserts in the end and I'm sure Bill would have liked to have been there personally for Kevin's assasination at the hands of his own party!

On the other side of the coin I encountered a friend at a party recently who flies in some pretty rarified air in the art world ... and when I asked what he thought about the Henson fiasco he rolled his eyes and said: "The man is an arrogant a'hole and got what he deserved because a lot of the minions around him believe he is actually a pedophile!"

I had to take a step back because what I was hearing was slander possibly fuelled by jealousy ... who knows ... it caught me by surprise though!
 
mfunnell said:
While some over-the-top types may have "vilified" him as a "child pornographer", and while the public hoo-ha may have caused various weak-at-the knees types to withdraw his work from public display, he was not "banned" nor was his work. In the article you link to:Don't get me wrong: during the ensuing (and mostly artificial) discussion of whether Mr Henson (not "Hensen") had "crossed the line" I concluded fairly early on that whatever "the line" is, he'd not so much as approached it let alone crossed it. And I found the idiot populist beat-up that surrounded the whole thing to be precisely that. The coppers and Deputy Public Prosecutor seem to have come to similar conclusions.

So let's not make more of it than it was. (I imagine his publicist has a different view of this.)

...Mike
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Yes I should have noted that the text "Controversial photographer Bill Henson..." was in fact a cut and paste of the first paragraph of the news article, not my words. And perhaps a continuation of a media frenzy designed to sell even more newspapers. It's easy to sell controversy on a black vs white dichotomy, but not so easy on the "shades of grey" Mr Hanson referred to during this live feed.
 
Keith said:
This whole event has been a media circus from start to finish with the odd quip thrown in by the occasional less than broad minded politician. Our Kevin got his just deserts in the end and I'm sure Bill would have liked to have been there personally for Kevin's assasination at the hands of his own party!

On the other side of the coin I encountered a friend at a party recently who flies in some pretty rarified air in the art world ... and when I asked what he thought about the Henson fiasco he rolled his eyes and said: "The man is an arrogant a'hole and got what he deserved because a lot of the minions around him believe he is actually a pedophile!"

I had to take a step back because what I was hearing was slander possibly fuelled by jealousy ... who knows ... it caught me by surprise though!
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Art and politics, "truth" and ego intertwine in both endeavours.
 
I like Bill Henson's work and can't really understand all the fuss about it. I'm a bit more hesitant to say the same about Jock Sturges' work. It's good but his pictures are much more sexually charged than Henson's which makes me feel very uncomfortable looking at it.
 
All a bit of a storm in a teacup. Or at least it should have been but with the (then) Prime Minster making a non-objective declaration on a subject he really knew nothing about and hadn't researched, and the popular media over-eager to do a sensationalist beat up, and the prudes in our community vibrating with outrage at any opportunity it was inevitable.
There were a couple of odd things though. The girl who was the subject of the one photo that was the cause of the official complaint was interviewed some days later on television. She was articulate beyond her years, was obviously carefully scripted, her parents were hovering and she looked like what she was - a young, precocious only child of 'arty' parents who were quite happy for her to do the shots and who it appeared were casual friends of the photographer.
I can see a certain beauty in the photos but they're not a genre that appeals to me particularly. I don't know why Bill got into such strife though (although most of it was manufactured by third party players). I seem to recall that David Hamilton became quite famous as an 'art' photographer by taking photos of very young teenage girls that were semi-erotic. Why Bill and not David Hamilton?
 
Pickett Wilson said:
Sturges' photos aren't "sexually charged." They are about as non-sexual as you can get. Lust is in the eye of the beholder.
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Maybe I should've said 'erotically charged', not sexually. I think that one cannot deny that some of his photos (not all) depict girls/boys in poses that are typical for classic nudes. They show a cetain awareness of their own body that we normally would not expect from children. Also a lot of his subjects are on the verge of puberty which adds to the ambivalence of the photos.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all saying they're pornographic or that Sturges is a pervert. But I think that his work raises certain questions about when a body starts being a potentially erotic thing. I don't find Sturges' pictures sexually stimulating but I see how one could look at them from an erotic point of view (hope that makes sense).

Of course that's all in the eye of the beholder and there are no absolutes here. But I'm thinking here of a society as a beholder not of individuals with a twisted mind.
 
I think Hensen does push the envelope a bit, and overplays plays the "artistic freedom" card. Unfortunately like many other countries we have become increasingly protective of children, with good reason, and this ends up impacting on things that were acceptable in another age. Or if not acceptable, then unpublicised. Society has become fearful of many things that once were not a concern.
Last week in the local supermarket I saw a cute picture - a four year old was sitting on a low shelf midst a stack of bottled water, immersed in her own little world and waiting for her mother who was chatting to a friend. I asked the mother if she would mind if I took a photo of her daughter. You could see the doubt cross her face and she replied "Well, yes I would actually". I said "No problem" and left. So it (society's changed attitudes) can affect all of us- not just the Bill Hensens of this world.
 
Leigh Youdale said:
I think Hensen does push the envelope a bit, and overplays plays the "artistic freedom" card. Unfortunately like many other countries we have become increasingly protective of children, with good reason, and this ends up impacting on things that were acceptable in another age. Or if not acceptable, then unpublicised. Society has become fearful of many things that once were not a concern.
Last week in the local supermarket I saw a cute picture - a four year old was sitting on a low shelf midst a stack of bottled water, immersed in her own little world and waiting for her mother who was chatting to a friend. I asked the mother if she would mind if I took a photo of her daughter. You could see the doubt cross her face and she replied "Well, yes I would actually". I said "No problem" and left. So it (society's changed attitudes) can affect all of us- not just the Bill Hensens of this world.
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Internet, internet, internet! It enhances our experience of things in the world that we may never otherwise encounter but it comes with a steep price IMO.

Thirty years ago that request would likely have been greeted with a smile from a proud parent and pleasure that someone would find her daughter photographically engaging!

Where are we I ask ... and where are we going? :(
 
Henson has been doing edgy work since I first saw them back in early 80's. I'd never heard of him being hassled till now. The work raised questions in my mind but that is what I expect art to do. If it troubles me I have to ask why, when it does not trouble others.

Here in Oz we are back to the days of books being taken off bookshelves, internet censorship, more film censorship. I believe Nabakov's Lolita is copping flak also.
 
Keith; Where are we I ask ... and where are we going? :([/QUOTE said:
Heading rapidly towards the same sort of Nanny State that afflicts a lot of the rest of the Western world. One in which politicians of every shade go into spasmic knee-jerk reaction any time a minor interest group starts to huff and puff. It IS a sensitive issue - my wife is a primary teacher and tells me things are a lot worse out there in parent-land than I imagine.
I think the game is already lost and we should all go back to taking landscapes :(
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Retitle (Edit) Thread?

Retitle (Edit) Thread?

jmilkins said:
Controversial photographer Bill Henson will face a public question-and-answer session tonight for the first time since he was vilified as a child pornographer for his use of underage models in a 2008 exhibition.

I think the title of the thread (not the content) is perhaps unfortunate. Bill was not "banned". His pictures were removed from an exhibition. The really contentious one by the gallery owners and then the rest were "taken into custody" by local plods acting under political pressure.
Hensen then self-imposed a halt to the exhibiting of his photographs for a while.
From what I've heard and read he seems a very artistic type, very sensitive, a bit naive, and maybe just a little bit too taken up with his type and style of art to realise he's at risk of offending influential sections of society. I mean, that's what artists often do, but he shouldn't be surprised when it happens.
Is he weird? I don't know- odd perhaps. Probably no more weird than a lot of people who don't come under public scrutiny and wobble through life somehow. Is he a pedophile? I don't know, but I don't think so. Maybe "odd" would be a better description. Where's the crossover point between "he is" and "he isn't"?
But I'd say this - after the furore that was created over his photographs, and after the police were embarrassed that they couldn't make a case to lay charges, you can bet there's some sort of surveillance going on. If he is, they'll find out. They have a good track record of busting some significant child pornography rings in this part of the world and internationally too.
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i'd agree that he's a little odd, but only because he has the guts to make art about a universal aspect of the human experience that is currently taboo.
 
Leigh Youdale said:
Heading rapidly towards the same sort of Nanny State that afflicts a lot of the rest of the Western world. One in which politicians of every shade go into spasmic knee-jerk reaction any time a minor interest group starts to huff and puff. It IS a sensitive issue - my wife is a primary teacher and tells me things are a lot worse out there in parent-land than I imagine.
I think the game is already lost and we should all go back to taking landscapes :(
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We are a weird society ... deluged with reality TV shows that take great delight in prying into people's lives and inner feelings.

We resent authority and the big bother mentality our governments adopt to keep us under control ... but succumb meekly to it with barely a wimper!

The temptation to live in the middle of nowhere under a couple of sheets of iron overpowers me at times! :p
 
Keith said:
We are a weird society ... deluged with reality TV shows that take great delight in prying into people's lives and inner feelings.
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It's interesting to reflect on the double standards we adopt. Not only reality TV but so much on TV including sitcoms is mildly pornographic in nature yet we (as a society) accept that. Just don't show it before 9pm. But a person trying to depict something as a serious artist, putting it in a gallery where you have to deliberately locate it and walk in is subject to different rules and finding it falls outside of what's accepted in a slightly different context is then harried and hounded. I guess the boundary line is a bit of a moving target and it appears in different places depending on circumstance. Wasn't it always thus?
What's generally frowned on in Canberra, Qld and Victoria is probably OK in Byron Bay.
 
Priorities certainly can be interesting. I remember reading some years ago a legal 'thought experiment'.

Same girl (say 12). A 19-year-old assaults her to steal her mobile 'phone, pushes her to the ground and breaks her arm. A 39-year-old puts his hand on her breast. Who gets the longer sentence?

Perhaps an exaggeration, but still a good point. On the more general subject of 'pornography' on television and in movies, I count myself among those who are surprised at the degree of graphic violence that so many guardians of public morals accept without blinking, while being quite willing to go off the deep end over anything sexual (especially homosexual).

Cheers,

R.
 
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