Four months after NSW police seized Henson’s work from a Sydney gallery, the photographer has sparked renewed debate after making his first public defence of his work.
In a book by journalist David Marr, Henson says he finds models in several different ways. Most often, he is introduced to them by a friend or relative, but sometimes he sees a child in public and gives a business card to their parents.
He said he was once invited to a Melbourne primary school by a principal and “had a look around at lunchtime” before the principal offered to contact the parents of two children he had seen. It was not the first time he had been invited into schools to search for models, the book says.
Leonie Trimper, president of the Australian Primary Principals Association, said parents should have been told in advance about Henson’s visit. “Primary schools are not showcases for the public to come in and choose students for their own personal projects.”
Gail McHardy, the executive officer of Parents Victoria, said anyone wanting to enter schools for “external purposes” had to seek appropriate permission in advance, not after the event.
Ms McHardy asked whether Henson had been accompanied by staff on the visits and whether he had approached the children.
She said model agencies and other agencies had to follow protocols when approaching children in schools.
But Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush came to Henson’s defence yesterday amid the latest controversy over the photographer’s work, saying public discussion of the furore had been “shrill”. “We’re not a very arts-attuned society,” Rush told The Weekend Australian. “So people start to see only the sexual politics of it.”
At the time of the raid on the Sydney gallery, police threatened to charge both Henson and the gallery, but the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions later found there was insufficient evidence to proceed. In Marr’s book, Henson concedes some of his models may have looked back with regret about working with him but says there has never been any negative reactions at the end of a session.
Liberal senator Bill Heffernan yesterday said it was an unforgivable betrayal of the trust placed by the parents in the schools that had allowed a photographer to commercialise children in the playground. “It’s absolutely outrageous someone ought to be sacked,” he said.
“The thing that shocked me most of all about the debate was the perception that artists were above the law or were asking for special exemptions, but that was never the case,” she said. “There is a responsibility in the artistic community to address that.”
In the book, Henson says he takes photographs only with the “willing participation and full control” of the family.
The child then makes the final decision. He also points out that children have an ability to detect unsavoury people. “Kids can smell a rat, you know, and we just don’t give them credit for it.
“If there is a dodgy teacher in the school, kids will know about it … It’s all part of the way in which they are naturally equipped to be resilient. Babies are tough.”
While Henson has been well-known to art collectors and gallerists for more than 20 years, most Australians hadn’t heard of him or seen his photographs until May, when police raided the Sydney gallery following a complaint from child protection advocate Hetty Johnston.
“He has a tendency to depict children naked and that is porn,” Ms Johnston said at the time.
The raid triggered furious debate, with everyone from Cate Blanchett to Kevin Rudd offering an opinion on what they saw as the differences between art and pornography.
The Prime Minister said he found the photographs “absolutely revolting” a sentiment echoed by then Opposition leader Brendan Nelson and former NSW premier Morris Iemma.
“Kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected,” Mr Rudd said at the time. “Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff frankly I don’t think there are any just allow kids to be kids.”
In contrast to Mr Rudd’s comments, current Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull publicly denounced the raids, claiming artists should be allowed to express themselves within the bounds of the law.
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