The definition of ‘art’ has been tried and tried again. According to Andy Warhol, ‘art’ is what you can get away with. In that case, Australian photographer Bill Henson’s recently released images might not be considered worthy of the title.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called the images ‘revolting’ and said that they had no artistic merit. The images, which were on display in a Sydney Roslyn Oxley9 art gallery, were stripped from the walls in May this year, and caused the gallery to be shut down shortly before Henson’s opening. The photographs exhibit young children from the age of 12, naked. Although the children’s bodies are in shadow in most of the images, there is one in particular, where a young girl’s breasts are completely visible.
The controversy comes from the struggle to differentiate the pornographic side of the images, to the artistic side. The debate of what constitutes art seems to have divided the politicians and child welfare administers (anti-art) from the fellow artists or ‘culturally aware’ (pro-art).
The Prime Minister offered a clear opposition to Henson’s images, and the general political cohort seems to have agreed with him. There has been uproar from child welfare organisations claiming that Henson’s images exploit their child subjects and leave the children exposed to sexual predators. On the other hand, Henson has received a great deal of support from both the Australian art society, and the general public. Australian artists are claiming that to censor Henson’s recent work would simply give greater opportunities to censor other work, and Australians will be in danger of losing freedom of artistic expression.
Both present reasonable arguments; but in a world so exposed to death and trauma, there really shouldn’t be a great fuss over just a few photos should there?
The artistically challenged
The argument here is that young adolescents do not have the maturity to understand the ramifications of posing naked for artistic purposes, and are thus being exploited. Hetty Johnston from Bravehearts, an organisation which supports victims of sexual assault, said that there is no question about the sexual context of the photographs. Psychologist Jo Lamble said, on Seven Network’s Sunrise, that ‘just because the photos were hanging a gallery and were taken by a respected and talented artist, doesn’t take away the fact that they’re naked…prepubescent and pubescent children’.
Many are concerned about the sexual connotations in the images and claim that the photographs are purely pornographic. Initially, it was assumed that Henson would be charged, however charges were never made.
Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott claimed that there was a double standard with the photographs. He brings up a worthy point—that if images such as Henson’s aren’t considered pornography in a gallery, theoretically, they should not be considered pornography in someone’s computer files.
The culturally aware
‘Nothing kills the thing we love quite so perfectly as our assumption that we always know what's best, what is right for someone else, whether it's another person or another culture,’ said Henson at his first public appearance since his images were stripped from the gallery. He sums up the argument of the pro-Henson party perfectly. The public were so quick to judge—seeing the images of naked children, we immediately labeled them as child porn. But Henson’s photographs inhibit so much more depth than the public is acknowledging.
Henson explained the images as an artistic exploration of that exclusive vulnerability and awkwardness between childhood and adulthood. ‘That thing of having one foot in the world of childhood and one foot in the adult world produces a certain uneasiness, a certain disposition, which I find really interesting,’ he said in a 2001 documentary on his work.
Australian actor Cate Blanchett, who was involved in the creative stream of the 2020 Australia Summit prior to the Henson scandal, voiced her strong support for Henson and his works. Shortly after the photographs were seized, Blanchett, along with 42 other participants of the Summit, released a public letter, urging Prime Minister Rudd to rethink his comments about Henson’s work. The letter stated that the intentions of Henson’s photographs were ‘not to titillate or to gratify perverse sexual desires, but rather to make the viewer consider the fragility, beauty, mystery and inviolability of the human body’.
Australia’s conservative senses seem to have taken over and we were automatically concerned for the young adolescents in Henson’s photographs. But is there really all that much to worry about? Undoubtedly there are far worse things in the world which young people are exposed to. And it is ironically the controversy created by the media that has forced the images into the public, furthering danger toward the adolescents in the images. Perhaps art is not so much what we can get away with, but, in Henson’s words, ‘[art] stops us in our tracks as we are formulating the truths we think we believe in. It stops us and it makes us wonder.’
How do I know this?
Veness. P, ‘Art saves us from moralism, says Bill Henson’,
News.com.au, 10 July 2008
www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24000566-421,00.html
Discussion ABC, 7.30 Report ‘Bill Henson’,
YouTube, 27 May 2008
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT0z_QtPRY0
‘The ultimate in unfair’,
Flatrock, viewed July 2008
www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/odds_and_oddities/
ultimate_in_unfair.htm
‘Is it pornography or art? Sydney’s art scandal’, 24 May 2008,
YouTube,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bfMciNiqbg
Staff writers, ‘Police to quiz kids in Bill Henson nude shots’,
News.com.au, 23 May 2008
www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23743217-2,00.html
‘Stars back controversial photographer Bill Henson’,
News.com.au, 27 May 2008
www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23767574-2,00.html
McWhirter, E, ‘Why I photograph children—Bill Henson’,
The Daily Telegraph, 27 May 2008,
www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23767104-5001021,00.html
