henson photos
28 May 2008
On Purity and Shame
Untitled, copyright Bill Henson
I was abused, but I am not angry at Bill Henson
Hetty Johnson from the anti-child abuse group Bravehearts was on TV tonight. She said that the one in five people who have been abused as a child were angry at the Bill Henson exhibition.I am one such person for whom she claims to speak. I was abused, but I am not angry at Bill Henson. I am saddened by those who would shut him up. If they succeed, they advance one step further, after so many steps in the last decade, in relegating young lives to a "purity" and innocence far removed from reality. It is a false and enforced purity that disempowers the young, but which the spin of modern politics requires that we all support.
It is in the cloistered purity of childhood and family or school that most child abuse takes place. Unknowing of their own position, scared to speak up about it, and shamed by what might be happening to them, children can not speak - they are not supposed to know of these things, and indeed often do not and so can not speak. The message now being sent loud and clear during the controversy over Bill Henson's art is that their bodies are pornographic: further reason to be quiet.
As I look at Bill Henson's work from a distance (since it is now hard to find), it would seem to give expression to real experience, and allow things to be said that I wish I had been able to say as a boy.
Hetty Johnson may be a brave heart, but her puritanical campaign has the potential to expand the circle of silence in which child abuse occurs. I know that as a boy becoming a man in the early 1980s I was completely denied the right to speak about my sexuality and in so doing could not bring myself to speak about abuse perpetrated upon me. This is my story.
I was fourteen. It was the day after Anzac Day, which, as a Navel Cadet, I had spent marching and falling into line. Afterwards, I noticed a swelling in my scrotum. I told my mother I was experiencing stomach pains. She wanted to take me to the doctor. I insisted on going alone. She gave in.
I told the doctor that I had drunk too much coke at the RSL function after the ANZAC march and that perhaps I was too bloated. It was the only thing I could imagine causing my testicle to swell.
He asked me to strip. I did so. He fondled the swollen testicle and the normal testicle. In his white overall he looked officious and respectable. He looked like an old man, tall and grey. He then reached for my penis and explained that the swollenness was a result of not releasing the semen inside me. He then proceeded to masturbate me, to help me understand how to do it. I too felt officious.
This task was a medical emergency, or so I thought. I don't recall ejaculating, and I don't recall how it ended. What I do know is that on the second day I returned to the clinic, after the swelling and pain had increased, the same thing happened. He played with me. I have no memory of it other than that.
My mother had no idea what was wrong with me because I was too embarrassed to explain it. I told her it was a stomach problem. Genital parts were simply not for the speaking in my adolescence.
The next day the pain spread to my lower abdomen. I sweated that night out. The next morning my mother was exasperated and insisted on taking me to the doctor. I still went without her. But she wouldn't let me go alone, and instead insisted that my best friend accompany me. She paid for a taxi. Two 14-year-old boys in a taxi in that small town was a rare sight indeed.
I can't remember much of what happened the third time at the clinic. I saw the same doctor. He prescribed antibiotics. At least it was some medicine. I wanted anything for the unbearable pain. I don't remember how I got home. I lay on the couch until the next morning, refusing to move to bed. I still remember the street lights streaming in through the curtains. I counted stars in between the passing of clouds to get through the night.
The fourth day my mother again insisted on coming to the clinic with me. She would not listen to my by now weak pleading to go alone. I wanted her to come, but couldn't say it. And in between that dilemma I wrestled with a pain I have never known again, a stabbing knife that was inside me and which threatened to pierce my outer body from within.
This time I met a different doctor. He had a moustache and tousled hair. The greyness was gone. I told my mother to wait outside. She refused. She came into the examination room, but when I refused to pull down my pants in front of my mother the doctor drew a curtain around me.
By now the swollen testicle felt and looked three times its normal size. He looked at my mother sitting outside the curtain-wrapped bounds and told her that she had to take me to hospital immediately.
My father was summoned from work and drove me 50 kilometres to the hospital. I don't think my parents had grasped what was happening, they were still of the belief that I had a stomach complaint. When we arrived at the hospital, I hopped towards the reception, and was then put in a wheelchair.
Admitted, I was then subjected to student doctors looking at my monstrously oversized testicle. The pubic area was shaved in preparation for surgery. I was told that I had testicular torsion - a twisting of the spermatic cord - the line upon which half the contract of life depends. It had to be cut out. That suggestion did not horrify me then, it came as an enormous relief. I just needed peace. And so it was taken from me, a by now gangrenous and dead testicle that might, I later learned, have endangered my life.
My parents - in that odd afterglow of surgery consisting of icecream, love, and disinfectant - asked me why I had not told them what was happening. I had nothing I could say. To this day, they do not know about what the doctor did, and I would not wish them to know.
Even now I can not give voice to what led me to being so protective of my mother, to shield her from my body. For that is what I was doing. But now a lapsed Catholic, I know that a lot of it had to do with shame.
I see no shame in Bill Henson's work.
Some details of this story have been changed.
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Well said, James Davis!
The ‘moral panic’ hysteria, started by people such as Hettie Johnson, who just love to appear on TV, and sent to extremes by our religious, conservative, obscenely moralizing Prime Minister, at a time when moral panic on paedophilia is reaching plague proportions, and making it dangerous for parents even to photograph their own children playing, is totally out of control. Now a world renowned art photographer has been threatened by gaol and law suits for doing what he has been doing for thirty years, to much acclaim; tomorrow, we will have parents and other siblings thrown in gaol for normal parental activities. Where will it all end. Australian, you are so damned sad! No wonder so many of our intelligentsia have left our shores for more appreciating, more liberal, more sensible countries. Just a Hell of a pit for all those who have to remain and be subjected to this garbage in the Media daily. I can hear the ‘hot panting’ from here! And it is not from art lovers, or even normal people who appreciate beauty! It is all those hypocritical fruitcakes out there, who need to impose their moral guilt reflexes on everyone else, and find a profit motivated scare-mongering media so willing to oblige. Any chance we can truck them all to Christmas Island (including our moralizing, pandering PM, and Premier Dilemma) as undesirable aliens, and just sort of forget about them?
Sure there may be a problem with paedophilia, but that is from a complete break-down in our Society, our mores, where parents have for so long totally neglected their children in the pursuit of a new house, a bigger car etc. If children were better cared for and informed in the home, it would be minimised, at least. But what do we do with the Priests, the Teachers, the leaders of our communities, who seem to have lost their moral compass? And do not say, give them Religion, as this has most certainly not done much to give us peace and tranquility, instead it has fostered wars and gross transgressions against humanity.
If our Society has a problem, and it has many, it is up to us to do something about it/them, without sacrificing one man (and his fellow innocent associates) such as Bill Hansen on the gallows of Insane Public Opinion and Moral Panic!
Dazza.
I have not seen any of Bill Henson’s photos, nor do i know what their impact might be on individuals, both those who have been abused in the past or those who haven’t.
But what the police action has done is to start a very important debate in Australia about how acceptable the use of sexual images of children and young people is for art, for commercial gain and for entertainment and what risks it poses for raising the risk of young people being sexually abused.
There is evidence of a link between pornography and sexual abuse but when does visual imagery of naked young people become pornographic? Every time or only when they are engaging in sexually explicit behaviour? And does sexually explicit behaviour encompass things like longing glances at the camera or not?
There is I think a parallel between community acceptability of corporal punishment and the growing concerns about the sexualisation of children and young people. My father and his brothers growing up in the second and third decade of the last century thought nothing of being beaten by their father with the razor strap that hung behind the bathroom door, and the brutalisation of being caned at school was a common experience for my own generation. Now both have been outlawed in many societies, including NZ, because of the evidence that toleration of corporal punishment increases the likelihood of some children being physically abused to the point of suffering significant harm.
Likewise, questions are now being asked about artforms that may have been tolerated in earlier generations because of the known association between use of pornography and the sexual exploitation and abuse of young people. Our belief systems that adults would not exploit young people have been sorely tested with the increasing evidence that adults whom they should have been able to trust are in fact not trustworthy - ministers of the crown, priests and ministers, teachers, as well, as James reminds us, physicians.
What I think these examples should be causing us to ask is where do we draw the line in protecting children and young people from a risk of harm that may be aggravated by a creeping process of sexualisation of children that causes some of us to start to ask "well if that’s ok, what’s wrong with this?" In the interests of the safety of children and young people we may need to reconsider our current views on what is and what isn’t acceptable. We need to do this in the context of what protection and guidance is - and could be - provided by statute and common law.
gvimpani
we have had no chance to decide for ourselves if these were sexual pictures of minors or just nudes of minors.
The important point is that rather than give the artist a fair hearing the P.M , the police and other vocal voices have allowed the media to indulge in their usual gross distortion of the issue.
With so little to go on I would weigh the relative veracity of the media against the opinions of his peers and side with his fellow artists.
The nude is an important aesthetic to artists , why should the prudes be allowed such loud voices ?
If their voices prohibit something as natural as nudity doesn’t this reinforce the social hangups that give pornographic images such allure to so many people ?
One of the clearest things I have read in this whole debate, thanks James.
You can’t do just ‘nudes’ of minors its illegal.
To objectify sexually a female of legal age may be legal but to many it’s highly distasteful.
This is not about taste, but about the legal implications of involving a minor (pubescent girl) in nude photography.
That said, from what I’ve seen of the Henson images they’re dark, gloomy and altogether creepy. And my first impression was that they were just another male egoistic pretentious artist producing ‘soft porn’ for those with a proclivity for pubescent girls.
I was sexually abused as a child, I support Bill Henson’s right to express himself and I dislike Hetty Johnston. I dislike her view of child abuse survival being one of perpetual inescapable victim-hood. I dislike her view that nudity is pornography (this is an exceeding dangerous cultural and moral position to hold). Photographs were taken of me being abused in the early 1980s and they were not even remotely like what Henson does.
There have been growing numbers of people who have started to express serious concerns about Hetty Johnston, both women and men. Because she has become the patron saint of child protection, she is automatically above criticism, which is a problem because nobody is above criticism. But criticising Hetty is difficult. She is not part of the religious right (although apparently she traded preferences with Family First), she is not a rabid feminist (whatever that is), despite the bleatings of extreme men’s groups. Also, criticising Hetty, leave you open to accusations of being a paedophile sympathiser, "if you are not for us, you are against us". Well that is just inquisitions, witch-hunt’s and McCarthyism all over again and we should not let it continue
What Hetty is though, is someone who does not mind taking a broad brush and tarring as many people as she can as child abusers. She has stated in the past that she does not mind innocent people going to jail if it means they catch all the guilty perverts in the process. She also believes that the correction and treatment of sexual offenders is an impossibility despite wide research to the contrary. Also, after the Hollingworth affair, the political power that she wields I think, has gone to her head! Hollingworth was probably right to go, but the way it was does was disgraceful.
The result of all this is very depressing as the mob takes a big swing at the art world and the pejoratively described cultural elites.
I has seen Henson’s work in galleries. Nude and non nude, some of it I like, some of it not so much. Irrespective it is certainly not pornographic.
For those who think that his photographs stimulate or encourage deviance. Just realise that any photograph of a child is potentially stimulating to a paedophile. That includes family photos, advertising, anything. You could put a girl under 20 layers of clothing over a 1940s outfit and it would make no difference. The logical stopping point of the argument that we must eliminate any images that could be potentially stimulating is to stop photographing children, and ensure that they are adequately covered (head to toe) in public.
The real issue is to protect children from abuse. That debate has lost its focus entirely in this puritanical attempt to persecute artists. I am really glad to see other abuse victims now speaking out about the sharp distinction between their experiences and what the puritans are trying to suggest is behind Henson’s work.
Thanks to Dazza and others, I’m starting to think that - given its inevitable portrayal of people as objects, and the inevitable superior power of the viewer over those ‘objects’ - art is not just in the eye of the beholder but confers an enormous privilege to the beholder and correspondingly diminishes the ability of the ‘object’ to do anything about it. In that sense, all art involving humans is - for want of a better term - politically pornographic, unless it can confirm the integrity of the human ‘object’, particularly in the case of photography, and for Christ’s sake, very much so in the case of unclothed ‘objects’ of the photographer’s and our privileged gaze.
Joe
This comment has been edited
How immature and unobjective to allow your personal feelings (Dan008) for Hettty Johnson (who I happen to think is doing a wonderful job in child protection) to influence your judgement on this issue, when as she says "this is all about protecting the sexual innocence of children".
This has to be seen in context - and that context is that the image of the naked young girl involved has been used for supposedly artistic purposes, while at the same time she’s been sexualised by allowing her to pose naked.
The artist would want you to perceive that his only (artistic) intent - was to reveal her natural beauty - however in this case, not much of her image is left purely to your imagination.
And the overall perception of many people is that the exhibition contained unnatural pornographic images of a young pubescent girl, a minor, too young to give her consent to such image-making and far too young to comprehend the subsequent continued sexualisation of her image that such a decision entails.
As far as I’m concerned, both her parents and the artist have a case of exposing a minor to being used as an object of sexualisation (naked) in a public gallery to answer to.
And isn’t exposing one’s self (going naked) in public still an offence? Or is it OK now as long as your young, slim and pretty?
What sexual abuse stopped in the 1980’s???
Do not think so!
As a mother, sister, daughter, cousin etc sexual abuse of females is 1 - 4
I will take a Hetty Johnson anyday…
Thank you for your comments Denise they are awesome reading!
Denise
I do not ‘get’ the idea of a direct link between nudity and sexualisation that you make. I do not think that implication makes any sense and there is a good 3500 years of art history to support it. On your last point, I think all body types, young and old need to be extolled. A nude photographic study of octogenarians would probably be timely perhaps. I actually think that would be a fascinating study. As a society we do need to really think about what beauty is and stop connecting so closely to ‘sexy’.
My issue with Hetty Johnston is that I do not believe any human being it above reproach. My feelings about her have no bearing on my feelings about the issue of Henson’s Photographs. I do have an issue that it looks like a small number of people were influential in turning this into a national scandal, which I believes takes the focus away from child abuse and exploitation
I am a sexual abuse survivor and what was done to me was disgusting and traumatic. It was also done in great secret with threats and domination and violence. It was awful. He also filmed and photographed it. So as a survivor I believe I know the difference. However, I do not want my experience to cloud my judgements in such away that the whole human form is fetishized. The corollary of which I find very disturbing indeed.
Nudity is not sexual per se , most people need a far more powerful connection with a person than a photo to evoke such a response. These comments reveal the shallow understanding of human archetypes present in society.
I agree with Dan008 that octogenarians would make a delightful study. We need more artistic studies of the body at all ages to help counter the negative body images that are re-enforced through marketing.
Beauty is seldom found below thirty five , younger people have a plastic quality to them , a body needs to be lived in to become expressive of a person and their journey , as the years pass a lot of people achieve a radiance that youth cannot duplicate.
Oh yes Jonah Bones marketing has made a mess of body image, and I do not think just young people either.
I posted a comment here http://www.newmatilda.com/2008/05/30/kids-are-people-too#comment-2897 about my take the sexualization of children in those aweful tween magazines. I will reproduce it below because I think it is in context with your side comment:
Sexualisation of children by the advertising industry, (and especially) tween magazines which ruminate over the ‘celebrity look’, i.e. so your 7 year old can look like Paris Hilton and glorify and embrace celebrity obsession is the real problem.
The fashion industry has had something to play here with little kid fashions looking almost identical to what 18 year olds wear. I have heard some fashion designer say they wanted to make kids clothing ‘more contemporary’ and ‘funky’ by engaging with the teen look and ‘downsizing it’. All they have done is make the gender distinctions extremely sharp at a very early age, and make little girls especially look like they are wearing clothes suitable for clubbing. Again I do not think this would have any added appeal to paedophiles but it does say a lot about how some sections of our society want girls to grow up fast to be a particular type of woman—not a very strong one. Childhood should be enabling not disabling. The celebrity obsessed muck does the latter.
Dan008 not to take this aside too far but have had numerous conversations with grandparents about this , recently in relation to primary school graduation , the ridiculous idea of dressing a 12 year old lass in strapless dress and heels to celebrate finishing primary school. Now that is a situation I found truly offensive as opposed to an artist honestly exploring concepts and aspects of society.
It sometimes seems that parents need to rid themselves of the responsibilty as quickly as possible by making them adults as quickly as possible.
Marketing has made a mess of sexuality by supplanting an understanding of our social functioning with overhyped ideas of romantic/sexual perfection.
So using young people in advertising is wrong, evil and - what, should be banned ? - while displaying photos of naked young girls in a gallery is not ? So, if advertisers used only shots of naked young girls, that would be okay ?
Joe
Geramine Greer’s article in the age at http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/through-a-lens-darkly-20080601-2kgo.htm… has been one of the more thought provoking responses from a public intelectual so far. I think she has penetrated the issue a little better than most of us have been able to here. Love her or loathe her, she certainly cannot be ignored.
I don’t know, Danoo8, I think she can’t make her mind up and has it a bit both ways, as usual. Of course there is a line between art and pornography in the legal sense, to the extent that it is relevant in this context ! What Henson did was illegal, for Christ’s sake, and an infringement on the rights of a young person, period.
Thank Christ none of you false-beards were sitting in judgment on the ten guys that raped that poor mentally-disabled 10-year-old up the Cape - you would have called it bold, moving art, a statement critiquing modern bourgeois values in a postmodern world, a cry for understanding from the alienated, an ironic commentary on love and belonging, (Jesus, I think some of you probably already have!) made videos of it from every angle and given the guys world trips explaining their artistic techniques.
Joe
Joe, your endless rants are boring and you are simply wrong. Saying, ‘What Henson did was illegal’…. ‘fraid not:
He hasn’t been charged with anything. The classification board has reviewed his works which have appeared on media websites and they have been cleared.
Keep going with your reference to the case up the Cape…. the only one who needs a lawyer might be you!
Rachel,
Thanks for your rant. Yes, as far as I can tell, it is illegal to take advantage of a person without her LEGAL consent, and in this case, it is as if the kid was photographed without her consent, since she cannot give this thing called consent until she is 16 or 17 or whatever. Which she is not. (Jesus, why do I have to tell a woman this ???!? Where are the feminists when you want them?) A bit like rape of a 10-year-old who also cannot ‘give’ her consent if she is under-age, no matter how many times she says yes, and especially if the poor kid is mentally impaired. Jesus, where is your decency, some of you bastards ??
That’s partly why there is such a legal instrument as an age of consent. Under a certain age, a kid can’t give ‘consent’, because they are deemed to be a child. End of story.
Joe
I just read your comment about this on another thread. You seem to have difficulty differientiating between having a photograph taken from particpating in a sexual act (with or without consent). The law is able to recognise the distinction.
It is not ‘a bit like’ and it is not ‘partly why’.
And some advice which you are welcome to accept or ignore: If you are so clearly offended by all of this, stop using the explicit terms you used in the other thread (I won’t link) and think of a better way to describe the physical development of pubescent girls and the description for being sexually attractive. You come across as an old creep who has spent too much time reading about all of this.
Of course they are different, Rebecca. Stealing a cow and stealing a Mars Bar are different, but they are both illegal, except to followrs of Proudhon. Both are illegal. Enticing a child to undress, to be photographed in that state, to perform acts which are legal only for adults, children smoking, drinking, etc. under-age are all offences - some would incur penalties against the adult and/or the child involved. Different but all illegal.
You know, when comments descend to personal insult, I know that I have prevailed with my superior arguments over the feeble efforts of my worthy adversaries. So from now on, whenever my worthy fellow-contributors sink to insult, that will be it. So, see you, Rachel.
Joe
OK Joe, read this slowly: Bill Henson’s photographs are not illegal. The DPP has not recommended charges be laid because they do not break the law.
Who’s Rebecca?
Thank Christ none of you false-beards were sitting in judgment on the ten guys that raped that poor mentally-disabled 10-year-old up the Cape - you would have called it bold, moving art, a statement critiquing modern bourgeois values in a postmodern world, a cry for understanding from the alienated, an ironic commentary on love and belonging, (Jesus, I think some of you probably already have!) made videos of it from every angle and given the guys world trips explaining their artistic techniques.
I find this statement of yours offensive and full of hubris that also commits the fallacy of equivocation. It shows that you have not engaged with the debate with everyone else nor read many of the responses to your objections which is a pity, because you have contributed some worthwhile things to it. You also seem to be tacitly suggesting that all who defend Henson including those on this forum are closet paedophiles.
It is about time that those moral zealots who pose as child protection advocates—you can easily be the latter without being the former—got on with the business of protecting kids. I would like to think I know something about this being an abuse survivor myself. Picking on Bill Henson to me quite simply is an insulting diversion that shows a complete naivety of what abuse actually is and distracts from the issue at hand. I thought they were much better than that!
Even if they were legal it still wouldn’t change the fact that they involve the nudity of an under-age female - a pubescent. And whether they are deemed as legal doesn’t alter the fact that many people find them distasteful and exploitative. This means they are being protective of their children should such an artist make such an indecent suggestion to them.
Or is it OK because Henson is such a well respected artist amongst his peers that anything he does must be artistic and could never be exploitative. How could an artist be involved in anything other than an innocent way over the explicit exposure of a pubescent girl. Artists don’t have a libido do they?
As a very young girl the subject is unaware of the implications and ramifications of breaking social mores, which could have permenant and irreversible consequences on her self image.
Will she have a right to sue for damages for being over exposed and under- protected by her parents and an artist - and if unchallenged, also let down by society?
And if this exhibition is allowed to proceed where will there be a line drawn as to who has the right to photograph young naked girls?
Which after this (non prosecution) will be seen to be condoned and acceptable - as long as the pictures are taken by a high profile artist.
Denise, I appreciate what you are saying but totally disagree. Many people find many things, distasteful and exploitative’. I’ll give you some personal examples: the Olsen twins, Bindi Irwin. Probably because I feel protective of them but I don’t think they should be banned.
What about the famous photo of the naked pubescent girl, Phan Thị Kim Phúc in 1972? Distasteful, exploitative - most probably, but whether you approve or disapprove it made a statement. This may seem extreme but you can’t pick and choose under the law. And you can’t say artists should have freedom of speech except for the ones I don’t like.
And your statement on permanent and irreversible consequences on the girls self-image - welcome to the life of the teenager.
Plus this ‘line drawn as to who has the right to take these photos, that line exists. There are laws for this that are enforced. Do you think this will create a sudden outbreak of suggestive photos of pubescent girls? It’s already here and it’s called MySpace.
What’s the artistic or political statement Henson’s making "It’s OK to perve on naked pubescent girls as long as I photograph them tastefully".
And if you can’t see the sexual connection between nudity and sexuality then you’re probably a nueter or an asexual being anyway and therefore do not understand the connection. But go read the Old Testament which gives us a clue as to this connection as far back as Genesis.
I’m not saying that would be the reaction by all males, but according to what my husband has seen of them, these photos are implicitly sexual in nature.
Putting prudishness aside, this is about an underage (or minor) who is too young and therefore incapable of making a well considered choice about whether or not she should pose naked for an artist.
Then any one could call themselves an artist and photograph pubescents to their ‘heart’s content’ - which I really don’t believe would be the right way to go - do you?
And if there are already suggestive photographs out there in cyberspace then call it what it really is soft porn, but it’s certainly not art fit for a public space, unless you believe to be offensive is clever.
No, that is not the statement Henson is making. Instead of deferring to News Ltd, the bible and/or your husband, read what Henson IS trying to convey through his work.
I have recently read some comment over at the Australian newspaper, there seems to be in some quarters now some backlash against Bravehearts. I think it is a real shame that her organisation mixes victim support with politics. People are getting sick and tired of the paranoia and hysteria that she is generating in the name of her cause. The sad thing is that it weakens her position and diverts energy away from the real problem. Her political views on what the solutions of child abuse are not held universally by victims or the community in general. By making a spurious complaint against Henson, all she has done is polarise people instead of bringing them together to confront this issue. What is most disappointing is that a leader of a child protection organisation cannot differentiate and see what child sexual exploitation is, and she does not have to look very far to find it. As someone said in response to a blog in one of the major daily newspapers, "Hetty could find a paedophile in a lolly rapper". Well Hetty, it is time you stopped accusing people who criticise you as being paedophile comforters and start looking elsewhere other than lolly wrappers. If you do that you might galvanise *everyone* instead of driving a wedge.
When I was a teenager with nothing on my mind but girls, girls, girls, there used to be an offence called carnal knowledge, which you could get six months for. You didn’t have to actually shag someone to commit this crime, just get them half undressed, even just upstairs outside, as we called it, at least that’s what we were warned about: if they were under sixteen, you’d had it. Not that that stopped us horny bastards up there in Darwin, but it was an offence, after all. I presume there is still a similar offence on the books. So I’m not sure what Henson has actually done if it could not be termed carnal knowledge. Why isn’t he getting six months ? And on top of that, he’s no teenager. Isn’t there a more severe penalty if the guy is more than six years older than the under-age girl that he is having carnal knowledge of ?
Sorry, I forgot the magic word: ‘ART’ An artist is to be forgiven everything, he (usually) is above the law, beyond it, he transcends it, what he leaves to eternal posterity is so incredibly important that the mundane rights of some snotty kid are totally inconsequential, she’ll get over it anyway, and if not, then - as some superior person above has said - welcome to the real world.
One day, there will people who might call themselves something like …. I don’t know…. something like …… FEMINISTS - yes, that might do it ! who will do something about the rights of young girls. But I won’t hold my breath.
Joe
Artists are not above law, but I fail to see how he has broken the law as it now stands. We have to ask why only now after he has been producing work like this for 25 years, all of a sudden the media and Hetty Johnston are interested. 70,000 people passed through the gallery of NSW in 2004 or whenever it was without a single complaint. Public consciousness of child sexual abuse has not changed much since then which is why I think attacking Bill Henson has nothing to do with it. 70 people has just been arrested in another sting operation in Australia, and think the police should publicly tell everyone just how different the images those people have been in possession of actually is from what Bill Henson does. This idea that paedophiles will go about collecting art books for sexual gratification is complete nonsense.
Like I said before, I was abused by a photographer. He was a semi-professional photographer, who also used to make films. I can categorically say that there was nothing, absolutely nothing ‘arty’ about the photographs he took of me. Next I find out about 8 years ago, someone I called ‘friend’ suicided because he had been charged with abusing boys. This only hit home emotionally a few years ago and now I am very, very angry, confused and so distressed that so many people just do not understand what abuse is about. This is why the Henson affair has been such a waste of time in my view. Wrong target, so off course.
About two years ago I found someone who has posted family photos on a photo sharing site. Normal innocent innocuous family photos. But the disturbing thing was the message in their profile ‘will trade’. Will trade what? I complained about what I thought was happening and was ignored. I cannot believe more has not been made of this activity. I see stopping things at the source like this a great way to nip child exploitation in the bud. Taking them to task.
This is just my view, it could be all wrong of course.
Sory, I’m from South Australia - who the hell is Hatty Johnson ?
Sorry, Dan, I must be having a longer than usual senior moment but I can’t make out what you are saying, one way or the other :)
Joe
Dan008 you should stop blaming poor Hetty for the social divide and wake up to the fact that this sort of moral dilemma has always existed within our societies and various different cultures since time began.
One man’s artistic expose is another man’s soft porn.
And what you must realise about society is that unless you condemn this sort of provocative nudity of minors posing as art, it will only encourage others to do the same, perhaps not so tastefully and without the consent of parents.
Remember this issue is really about the moral dangers of exposure to the general public via the ‘art market’ of pictures of naked young girls (and boys).
Which even if the intentions of the artist are just pure aesthetics and social commentary, it doesn’t alter the fact that in the end it comes down to the perceptions of the general viewer, not to some elite ‘art market’ or group of artists.
Denise, Bill Henson’s nudity is not provocative. Walk into an adult shop and you will see what provocative nudity is. And lots of it too. Unprovocative is exactly what ‘that’ stuff is not. The gap between Henson and exploitative nudity is canyon wide!
Actually makes me think more people should walk into an adult shop and actually see what that seen is all about. Actually, I assure you if Miranda Devine walked into one of those shops she would want the whole industry shut down. As an aside I should say that I really do not care much for p*rn—actually it objectifies in much the same way extreme puritanical prudishness fetishises.
Lastly, did you know one of Hetty Johnston’s senate campaign donors was the Eros Foundation. Australia’s adult industry peak body. Look it up. I suggest Hetty should not be taking money from these people.
Danoog,
Thanks for putting most of us right about adult sex shops - while many of us are concerned about protecting the rights of children, it is interesting that so many other people are interested in nothing above getting their kicks from either art exhibitions or sex shops. NM certainly has a wide range of readers !
Thanks, Danoog, I have found new respect for Miranda Devine and Hetty Johnstone. They certainly seem - even on your own admission - to have more concern for the rights of children than any of your one-armed raincoat brigade.
Joe
Joe
Thanks for the insult—"one armed raincoat brigade"—very novel. As your position weakens so your ad hominem increases. I have been watching your performances on other forums, your writing/debating style is quite distinct so I have seen roughly the same pattern elsewhere. I am actually taking this quite seriously because Hetty has completely taken her eye off the ball.
Putting who right? By my own admission? Hetty Johnston seems to have more concern for her own publicity.
You are strongly implying yet again that support for Henson is equivalent to giving child sexual abuse the green light. Now your equivocating again across art exhibition or sex shops and completely missed the point about what I was trying to illustrate, quite deliberately. People like me really do believe that there is a whole world out there beyond sexual gratification, it is quite liberating really. I truly pity you that you have not found this in your life yet.
Danoog,
Equivocating ? I didn’t think so. Power imbalances, Dan, that’s the nub, especially of that between naked young girls and middle-aged men. And why think that I included you in that raincoat brigade ? This is not about you.
Joe
I suggest that adults can make up their own minds about what incorporates a willing sexual involvement, whereas children can’t.
The subject matter may have beeen handled discreetly and aesthetically, however the real legal subject involved is the age and nudity of the sitter, not the way the naked subject was displayed.
To some showing cleavage is pornographic and to others an arse hanging out of a pair of bikinis is pornographic; but still I can’t see either of those two fashion statements being outlawed as porn.
Our social moral and ethical standards have widened considerably in the past fifty years and no doubt artists reflects this phenomenom, but this should not be by exploiting a minor by getting them to pose naked for them.
Obviously the girl involved was a willing subject and has signed a disclaimer so she will have no recourse to sue for psychological damages against the artist or society down the line.
Hi Denise,
Yes exactly ! As you say, ‘the age and nudity of the sitter’ - but that girl, if she was under the age at which she could enter into any legal agreement,cannot sign a disclaimer. That’s the point of being considered by the law to be under-age.
I guess we have two legal evolutions running side by side - the evolution of the broadening of what is permitted by so-called artists; and the evolution of the broadening of the definition of children’s rights. The art establishment, capitalist art markets, pedophiles and others who are unconcerned by issues of human rights focus on the first, while other fools like me focus on the second. Oh well, you can take the boy out of a Marxist environment, but you can’t take Marxism out of the boy.
Joe
"Obviously the girl involved was a willing subject and has signed a disclaimer so she will have no recourse to sue for psychological damages against the artist or society down the line."
So Bill has paperwork? Nah, he has a couple of copies of ‘Silence of the Lambs’, I don’t think all his models were capable of consent,
nor for that matter would all have signed any. Look, his stuff is classified as child porn in more territories than enough, it has been cleared, in controversial circumstances in just the one.
bill Henson’s kiddie art, can’t be sold in London, so what kind of art is it, that can’t be sold in London?
It’s OZ-ART! Which is a damning indictment of Australia.
The sooner Bll Henson is put in prison, the sooner Australians can hold their heads up again.
I’m not so sure Henson’s photos are legal, just because the DPP hasn’t prosecuted him.
Perhaps someone needs to file a complaint on behalf of the underage subject, which no-one has yet done.
Why? Because this is against the wishes of the girl herself.
And perhaps the law requires a Complainant and Witness that is complaining against her illegal treatment, not compliant with it.
Whiffy early career Hensons are turning up on the secondary market. It is unsurprising that the vendor of ‘Untitled 1985/86’ is a tad skittish and wanting to offload (see Mnemosyne, p 233, for another great pic from the same shoot).
http://www.menziesartbrands.com/cgi/dmcat.cgi?rm=display_lot&item_id=149…
Corrie Perkin’s report last week in The Australian (9/9/08) on the Henson child nude up for auction at Lawson-Menzies was timely (despite causing nary a ripple), given David Marr is launching his new book "The Henson Case: Art and Panic" on Oct 13th at the Seymour Centre. It promises to be a grand affair (or is there some other reason why it should be relocated from Gleebooks upstairs?).
Marr, a card-carrying civil-libertarian (and we all know about those!), was unflagging in his efforts to ensure the core issue of the Henson debate was hijacked from child protection to art censorship. (It would not be entirely in the realm of fantasy to suggest that he may even have been responsible for getting the Roslyn Oxley image before the Classification Board, thereby emasculating the prosecution…. but then I may just be paranoid).
But what if Lot #214 was put before the Classification Board? it would certainly be interesting to see what was made of another under-age nude, legs akimbo, this time round…