Davd Marr adds more to the Bill Henson "trawling" primary school playground in Melbourne in search of models. He says:

After his visit to St Kilda Park Primary last winter, the school merely gave Henson's number to the parents of a boy and a girl. The boy's parents contacted the photographer.The pictures Henson then took of the boy have never worried police. He has his shirt off. He was not naked. That he was discovered in the playground is now causing disquiet, but the pictures themselves are low octane images taken with full parental consent.

Marr asks a reasonable question: should whether television producers, filmmakers, artists and modelling agencies should continue to be allowed to visit schools to spot for talent. He asks this question because he points out that the artist followed the same guidelines used by casting and modelling agencies when seeking his models.Henson had told David Marr that he was accompanied by the principal of the school at all times and did not directly approach the children during the visit last year.

The sole focus on Henson looks to be yet another beatup by outraged conservatives.

Pam,
I understand Sydney Morning Herald journalist David Marr has written a book about the Bill Henson censorship debate entitled The Henson Case.

Gary,
once again children are silent. They are not invited into the public debate. Surely the children involved are entitled to greater participation than they are currently allowed in the decisions that affect them? Children are actors who shape the world as well as being shaped by their circumstances.

Presumably your "conservatives" description was not meant to cover Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard? You fail to mention in your post that criticism of Henson's behaviour - in scouting for models in schools - is coming just as loudly from self-described progressives.

Tony of South Yarra
'conservative' is a bit loose in htis context. I should have said moral and social conservatives to distinquish my usage here from political conservatives.

So you can be left of centre--a la Rudd and Gillard --- and be a social or moral conservative. I see no contradiction ----the ALP has always been home to people who are far more socially and morally conservative than some people in the Liberal Party.

Tony of South Yarra
As The Age editorial says:

Henson continues to be unfairly depicted as some sort of predatory pornographer who gained access to a school in mysterious, underhand circumstances when, in reality, he appears to have been invited and that his subsequent dealing with one pupil was with the full knowledge and consent of the child's parents as well as the involvement of the then principal

Rudd continues to be revolted and disgusted whilst Gillard and Ellis talk in terms of sending shudders down people's spines and snatching away innocence.

Yet the issue is a simple one, as The Age points out. Did Henson breach Education Department guidelines for any extracurricular activity — be it visits by photographers, career counsellors or football scouts — that involves the presence of strangers on school grounds in proximity to children.

The hostile language of the ALP Ministers imply that there was--big time----and that is before an investigation has even taken place to see whether this was so. How do they know that Henson breached Education Department guidelines for any extracurricular activity?

Gary,
you may have misread the Leak cartoon--read it in support of those who are disgusted and revolted.

Bill Leak says in The Australian that Henson's work is significant art and that the work was disturbing and beautiful. He goes on to say that:

The fact that Henson was quite prepared to admit that this [talent scouting around a school playground for potential models] was his modus operandi exonerates him completely. The man is so far removed from being a threat to children that he never even considered the possibility that such a practice just might cause a ripple of anguish among "concerned parents". But that doesn't mean that he wasn't naive and it doesn't mean he wasn't stupid.

He goes on to say that in the cartoon in question (above), my intent was merely to show how easily one's artistic intentions can be misinterpreted.

Henson's art is child pornography in London and quite a few other places, you folks in cowtown can try to claim otherwise, but you are wrong.

Title: 'Fairy' images conviction adds to confusion
Feature: news
Date: 13 August 2008

http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=809629

No can sell, trade, buy or own, even remotely, Bill's child porn in London.

Gregory

Gregory,
Australia is not London. We have our own laws here and they say that Henson's art is not pornographic. I'm inclined to trust our own laws rather than the snide opinions of the Director of the Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition.

I know it is not London, you down unders, some of you, at least, think a child pornographer is Caravaggio, I'm chilled to the legal differences.

My opinions ain't snide, they're the law in the world's biggest art market. I know what a child pornographer is, when it isn't art. Bill Henson is just a pervert.

Gregory if your remarks are not snide then why the reference to Australia as cowtown?

Pam is right. Your remarks about Henson and pornography do not square with the judgement of Australian law.

So long as you accept it is naked kiddie Oz 'art' after the Japanese fashion, we are squared to it.

But Alison Croggon was a spoofer, Henson is banned in fifty times more galleries than he can exhibit in. They will become fewer and fewer.

So still can't own it, sell it, buy it, keep it, or trade remotely with it, in London, so not 'universal' art. Dirty pictures from a perv in Oz.

I do also figure there are Henson mages floating around in Oz, which could send him to prison even there.

Are folks trying to dump or trade the more extreme items? That wouldn't surprise me.

I've also had letters from people who were with him in the early days.

Even serpents shine, but not Bill, he is just a child pornographer (in London).

Yvette Doll

"I'm inclined to trust our own laws rather than the snide opinions of the Director of the Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition"

As an artist who has made a lot more money than Bill could make in 12 life times, I'm telling you, it is not mercantile art.

Art is something I could rack out, or sell anywhere, I culd no more sell Bill's perv photos in London than I could sell Gary Glitter's favourite child porn image.

you can sell dogs heads for soup in some places, the Japanese comparison works perfectly, it is a kiddie fetish type of 'art',

he was caught wandering about in a primary school for crying out loud!

The argument that the images sent to the CB give his earlier or other work a free pass is simply dishonest.

Henson is doable as a child pornographer even in Australia.

I do accept that your child protection laws are weak. In London he would have gone straight to jail.

Henson is just looking at trouble, that's his future, it doesn't have Covent Garden or anything in it.

Yvette Doll

It is morally conservative to want to protect children? Civil liberties is about enshrining the freedom of adults to exploit and abuse kids?

Marr's book is out. He has for the first time published (among other photographs) a full frontal nude of this long-suffering child (i.e. a photograph that depicts her 'sexual organs' - legal term). He has published a more explicit photograph included in the Roslyn Oxley exhibition that has never been previously published.

A child has somehow consented to this repeated, abject exposure?

Presumably consent has been obtained from all the parties (under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, however, parental consent is overridden), but this is an extraordinarily provocative act on the part of David Marr. Is he (and Michael Heyward, his publisher, who gave the 1983 'junkies' show a glowing review) just trying to goad child protectionists into another stoush with civil-libertarians by this cynical move?

Has Marr strategically included other non-controversial Henson photographs to provide artistic ('non- sexual') context and thus immunity from prosecution? (This, if you recall, is where the law previously fell down, with 'sexual context' required by the NSW Crimes ACT 1900 - s 91H [b]).

Is it not exploitative, if not abusive, of this poor child, for Marr and his cronies to publish a previously unseen (accept by those who viewed the rehung show), more explicit photograph simply to score points?

My heart goes out to this hapless, besieged kid.

David Marr and all other parties to the cynical publication of this book and republication of these photographs are, in my view, now fully complicit in the sexual exploitation and abuse of this child.

All should hang their heads in shame.

Yevette Doll,
you do talk implausibly when you say that Henson "was caught wandering about in a primary school for crying out loud!" Henson had permission from the school principal (Sue Knight) and followed proper procedure for people (talent spotters) visiting public schools in Australia. So your interpretation of these events--"caught"---- has no basis in fact. You are creating fictions.

Your other claim that "Henson is doable as a child pornographer even in Australia' has little basis in law in Australia. Public galleries are still buying Henson's work in Australia.

Mugley,
It is difficult to see how a book on the Henson controversy by Marr is sexual exploitation and abuse of the child. The photos in question were not seen as pornographic by the law.

You imply they are despite your knowledge that parents and the teenagers have given consent to participate as models in Henson's work.

Yvette Doll,
if you continue making abusive remarks about other people--eg;

But Alison Croggon was a spoofer, Henson is banned in fifty times more galleries than he can exhibit in. They will become fewer and fewer.

that have no relevance to the post then you will be treated as a troll and banned

The law, Mr Sauer-Thompson, is affectionately known as an ass.

Henson always gets permission, or has someone wangle it for him.

Simply because the NSW DPP was hard-pressed to determine "sexual context" due to Henson's mesmerising aesthetics, his hot-shot legal team, the vagaries of child protection laws, and poor logic (no one quite seems to get the fact that a man has somehow got all and sundry involved in persuading this little girl to remove her clothes for him), it does not follow from that the child is magically protected from being hurt again by publishing this explicit photograph. It just means it is open slather now for re-abuse, re-exploitation and revictimization.

Is it okay for Marr to score cheap points this way? Just to add insult to injury, the photographs aren't even titled.

Just to update you on Henson's oeuvre:

These floated up on the secondary market and were sold at auction on September 25th:

http://www.menziesartbrands.com/cgi/dmcat.cgi?rm=browse&cat_id=83

The same child model in Lot 214 is depicted half-naked in Henson's 'Tweety and Sylvester' photograph that turned up earlier on the secondary market and was sold on May 30th (www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23782990-5001021,00.html).

Perhaps it is time to get the UN involved.

Mugley,
it is interesting that child advocates such as yourself continually deny the voice of the teenagers in this debate. The children concerned and their patents gave consent to working Henson at the time of the photos and expressed their support of Henson several years latter when the conservatives expressed their moral outrage earlier this year.

Teenage nudity for you is pornography. That equivalence view has been rejected by the law since the context of the nude photos matters. The law is sensible on this on making these distinctions.

Listen-up

Try to keep the Oz myopia in some sort of order.

you are so childish, sulking on the internet is so early 1990s.

There is only one country in the entire world that has people like Henson trawling primary schools.

It isn't even legal in Japan which is the capital of the Hensoneque.

Even they have that idea in the bag. They save 'predatory' for crowded trains and buses.

This is my point.

Alison Croggon grossly misrepresented, and I mean wildly exaggerated,

the positions of overseas galleries (in general) in relation to Henson. London is entirely closed to his U18 fetish art.

You are therefore talking about a kind of 'art' that has to struggle to stay legal, just like the Japanese variety.

You can't dismiss the lack of marketability or acceptance or legality in relation to this Henson thing.

He has been banned from far more galleries than are prepared to show his stuff and the latter are a rapidly dwindling species.

Jeepers! his U18 art is contraband, it is only art in the libertine Oz sense, that is how out of whack you people are.

(The police in the UK are waiting for the stuff to show up! It will be another Gary Glitter thing. )

It is not even worth trying to sell Henson's child fetish art, where is the lawyer fee? You won't find that in a few grand.

It is just not commercial, even if somebody was brave enough to try,

Yvette Doll