Seems there’s a beat-up at the SMH in anticipation of the launch of David Marr’s new book: The Henson Case. In this advertisement for next weekend’s Good Weekend the SMH pix editors parody their own self-censorship, brought on themselves by the Bill Henson controversy of a few months ago. David Marr’s account of the issues raised by the various reactions to Bill Henson’s work do not engage with the substantive questions of the weak nature of the defenses already mounted: the prior arguments based on context and intentionality (it’s erotica, not porn, so that’s OK) are about vested interests, and not the 21st century reality of the way images are now distributed and consumed. Henson and his dealers have sold and continue to sell individual works out of context, and to distribute such out-of-context works on the internet, so the stable door is wide open… Nobody appears to be willing to mount a defense of this aspect of the “case”.
On September 15 we posted a reference to a Bill Henson photograph of a different order to any of those that were in the spotlight back in May. This (trigger warning) image was put to auction last week by Menzies Art Brands, on their online catalogue, and it’s still there. (We wonder whether Henson gave copyright permission, but that’s another issue). We asked then whether such examples of his work could be defended in the same terms as the discourse which emerged in May, and subsequently.
Throughout this debate, ArtWranglers has always taken the position that the world of the internet has radically changed the context in which images such as these are (now) seen and interpreted. Defense of the work in its original context, or a defense based on the autonomy of its artistic intent, seems to us to be no longer sufficient once the work is “out there” circulating on the internet. There, it occupies a different contextual category, and is therefore subject to different values, criteria, and critiques. Surely it is no longer a matter of where each of us may draw the line between (say) erotica and pornography, or whether the artist’s intention supercedes its new context in the wider world of vernacular photography. Once it’s “out there” in cyberspace, there’s nowhere to draw a line, and just as individual works may challenge our assessment of the whole corpus of Henson’s work, so such works as the above now need to be assessed (and defended) in the expanded field of internet imagery. Perhaps. What do you have to say about that, David? And there are more questions for David to answer on The Art Life. Read also Jonathan Green’s comments on Crikey. Regrets? A few…
And a growing caution in interview with Leigh Sales: “The photographs are beautiful and nothing Henson has done in the last few months with all of these photographs breaks any law and none of them are remotely pornographic.” and “The Internet has changed the way we view photography. There is a sense in which no photograph can actually be corralled anymore. Everything is potentially available to anybody anywhere in the world, once it gets on the Internet. We still have to deal with that, that apprehension of the Internet, because it’s changing the way we consider art, photography, all sorts of things. Part of the purpose of my book is to look at the history of that fear of the Internet, and try to work out whether in fact we need to be so afraid. I don’t think we do.”