Below is one of the images seized by Police preceding the later dropped court case against Henson under the Australian Child Protection Act. 20 of 41 of his images were seized.
There is some interesting writing on blogs all over this issue, Here and also Here are links to a couple of them...
Personally, i find Henson's work incredibly powerful, dark and very moving. his images are imbued with a sense of gritty darkness and i am continuously drawn to them for this. In terms of weighing in on the "porn" debate i dont feel as if i need to...but if our society has come to a point where art (photography or otherwise) that pushes our social boundaries, makes us sit up and take notice, makes us question things or provokes a powerful emotional response is going to get the artist locked up.......well..... i might as well quit now.
I also find it very weird that i feel the need no wait, i feel "socially obliged" to put turn on the "adult content warning" for the blog because i have that image in here....hmm....
3 comments:
I have always wondered what he would have done if that opening went ahead and someone (an artist) masturbated in front of a work. How would Henson react to someone challenging the normative viewer relationship he relies upon. I suspect that the work's poignancy only comes from us all being polite patrons, which is the hypocrisy of his work.
Having said that I saw some of his collages at NGV, and they were amazing.
Yea there is a reliance in Henson's images on us all being the model image 'consumer'. If people had gotten into that show and taken prints off the wall, or masturbated as you say, or admitted to gaining enjoyment/pleasure from the pictures of young girls something very different would be happening...
His images are epic and i think there awesome for their dark and often brutal/sexual nature but it is this dark nature that we as patrons fail to acknowledge, no-body would ever admit to being aroused by said images yet in some sick dark way in sure it has happened to some people. So yea that is exactly the hypocrisy of the work, that we cannot speak of this...
The Tate don't want to exhibit his kiddie stuff and they never will, it is illegal in Britain, and London as an arts capital, has to protect its reputation.
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