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Bill Henson is hero amongst many of us photographers and we were privileged to have him speak at our RMIT photography graduate exhibition in 1999.

The recent series of events have been both disturbing and interesting for variety of reasons. But first here is a an interview with Henson from EGO magazine to give better insight into the complexity of his art.

EGO Magazine: Bill Henson

2005

These are a few points that I have come up with in regards to this situation.

• Bill Henson should not be targeted as a pornographic photographer nor as a pedophile. His work carries complex themes and messages and should not be read out of context as has happened in this case. Modern Art requires a language for it to be correctly understood and appreciated. However, I do believe an ethical line has been crossed by Bill Henson with some of his photographs.
• There should be far more anger directed at the exploitation and sexualisation of children in marketing and advertising. Their only premise is to sell and they are using children to do that.
• This debate simply NEEDS to extent beyond Bill Henson and the art world!
• This event shows how quick Australians are to criticize things we don’t know about or understand. Australians’ need to develop their critical skills by researching the issue before drawing such ignorant conclusions. Such blunt criticism perpetuates misinformed hysteria.
• This intolerance has shown how much society has changed and a new paradigm has been established as to what is considered acceptable and unacceptable.  Bill Henson amongst many other artist have been photographing pubescent children for many years. The work of Sally Mann in particular is of interest here as she photographed her children naked right through their childhood and teenage years. What is Art? What is an Artist? Photograph by Sally Mann
• Our concept of ‘photography’ has changed. We have moved far from the innocence of photographing everyday life of people and places. Photography now has the phenomena of a prying evil eye used to ‘capture’ and ‘destroy’ its subjects. This paranoia has been predicated with the advent of the internet. The negative aspects of photography however were highly theorized by Susan Sontag in the 1970s. http://www.susansontag.com/onphotographyexcrpt.htm