Bill Henson, from Untitled 1996/97. Private Collection copyright Bill Henson, photo: Mark Ashkanazy.
Alex McDonald - Bill Henson
11 January 2005
Bill Henson ranks among the finest photographers of our time. While clearly a technical master with a profound understanding of the effects of light, his subject matter can be unsettling. His teenage subjects always seem so vulnerable, and this creates for viewers a constantly shifting emotional response to his photography.
Like the William Kentridge survey held at the MCA last year, this retrospective demands a lot more from viewers than your average art show. 360 photographs - all of which are lusciously detailed - are spread over ten rooms (the entire lower level of the Art Gallery of NSW). Each room houses a different period of Henson’s career and all vary greatly; from rooms filled with small black and white portraits, to his ‘cut screen’, montage works that were first shown at the 1995 Venice Biennale.
The scale of the exhibition makes it a somewhat overwhelmingly photographic display. And as beautiful and brooding as these images are, there is simply too much to take in in one go. Thus, a return visit is almost essential for anyone wanting to explore the subtler aspects of Henson’s oeuvre. 
Still, there are images here that stay with you after leaving the Gallery. The slightly blurred scenes in his Untitled 1980/82 series - which were taken in the crowded streets of Dresden and East Berlin - somehow manage to capture the same doe-like faces (with those unusually, pronounced features) that reappear in later work. Henson originally travelled to East Germany to document the architecture rather than the people, however he was drawn (impulsively perhaps) to images of the people and, as stated in the room notes, “the tragic beauty of these [buildings], and their history, is paralleled in the faces of those in the crowds.”
Also striking are his Untitled 1985/86 photographs, which were shot in Egypt and Melbourne. The switch to colour at this point in the exhibition is a welcome change as is the increased size of the works which show cloud covered skies, infused with sunlight, alongside close-up glimpses of the bodies and faces of adolescents in their bedrooms. These photographs are intimate to the point of feeling claustrophobic and are simultaneously dreamlike and nightmarish. The views of Egyptian ruins and Melbourne suburbia combine with these unsettling images of teenagers to create what Judy Annear describes in her catalogue essay as "landscapes of the imagination."
Henson’s ‘cut-screens’ are, surprisingly, the most painterly images in the collection. These works show a group of naked kids cavorting in a bush landscape, surrounded by misty, snow-covered mountains. Henson has then cut and ripped various pieces of the photographic paper and rearranged the pieces, before gaffer-taping them together. These violently created, yet immaculately composed images are truly for Henson’s fans.
Considering how many people will be seeing this show over the coming months, this room is bound to tweak more than a few eyebrows. And it is indeed refreshing to see the Art Gallery of NSW producing a blockbuster show that pushes us out of our comfort zone.
More Information
Bill Henson
Until 3 April
Art Gallery of NSW, The Domain
Details: 1800 679 278
Tickets: $10/$7 concession
Inset Image: Bill Henson, from Untitled 1980/82. Private Collection copyright Bill Henson, photo: Mark Ashkanazy.
Website: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/
