The past week’s attack on photographer Bill Henson has featured a cynical alliance of three potent forces: politicians (notably Labor), the mass media and the police.
It is a campaign that thus far has seen the closure of Henson’s photographic exhibition in Sydney, the seizure of his works by police at the National Gallery in Canberra and regional galleries in Newcastle and Albury, visits by police to both the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of NSW, interrogations of former models and their families and the lingering possibility of obscenity prosecutions.
The country is divided: on one side, those who see cherished artistic freedoms at risk, on the other, vociferous supporters of what they see as “the rights of the child”. It’s nothing if not a flammable mix. This is how it all came together.
On 22 May, columnist and ongoing Howard propagandist Miranda Devine triggered the witchhunt in The Sydney Morning Herald :
Opening tonight at the elegant Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in the heart of Paddington is an exhibition of photographs by Bill Henson, featuring
n-ked 12 and 13 year-olds. The invitation to the exhibition features a large photo of a girl, the light shining on her hair, eyes downcast, dark shadows on her sombre, beautiful face, and the budding breasts of puberty on full display, her hand casually covering her crotch.
Her article and the ensuing shock-jock outrage on Sydney commercial radio caught the attention of the media spivs in the Iemma Government. For them, the Henson furore was a godsend.
Just 24 hours earlier, former Cabinet minister Milton Orkopoulos had been sentenced to 13 years’ jail for depraved s-x and drug offences involving minors. There were mounting questions about a political cover-up and the savage treatment of the whistleblower Gillian Sneddon.
Iemma, traveling in China, was informed of the Henson “angle”. Staff asked the premier to sign off on a Sydney-prepared rapid response note (RRN) describing the photographs as “offensive and disgusting”. Iemma authorised its immediate release.
Meanwhile, in the Brisbane headquarters of Bravehearts, the child assault action group, an email arrived at 12.46pm from “a member of the public” calling for action over the Henson exhibition.
Bravehearts founder and executive director Hetty Johnston told Crikey that the email and “a couple more concerned phone calls” prompted her to co-write and co-sign a letter to NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scippione and Arts Minister Frank Sartor and fax them off. (Yes, she had their numbers).
Her faxes had a galvanising impact on the police and the Iemma Government which, incidentally, partially funds Bravehearts in NSW.
Rose Bay police commander Allan Siccard said that at 3.30pm the station received a report “from a concerned member of the public” about the Henson exhibition. The cops arrived just over an hour later, threatened the gallery owners and the opening was postponed.
(How different was the treatment given to Gillian Sneddon, Orkopoulos’s electorate secretary who phoned parliament in 2006 to tell them the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs was under police investigation for pedophilia. Their response was to sack her!)
Next morning, 23 May, Johnston appeared on Channel Nine’s Today show to give an early morning start to her campaign against Henson and the gallery owners. Her views were already sensationalising the morning media:
It’s child exploitation, it’s criminal activity and it should be prosecuted, both the photographer Bill Henson … but also the gallery because these are clearly images that are s-xually exploiting young children.
They are clearly illegal child p-rnography images, it’s not about art at all, it’s a crime and I hope they are prosecuted.
And for good measure, she later added: “I asked them (the police) to prosecute, both the gallery and the photographer, but I’d like to see the parents as well looked in to.”
By happenstance, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was also at Nine’s Brisbane studios and she showed him emails of Henson’s work. When he appeared in front of the cameras to talk about petrol and other matters, he was also asked about the photographs.
Adopting the tone of Iemma, Rudd said they were “absolutely revolting”. The Australian Federal Police opened a nationwide inquiry and the sleepy hollow known as the Australian Communications and Media Authority declared that it was holding an investigation “following a formal complaint”.
Predictably, federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett and the NSW Arts Minister Frank Sartor, Labor politicians supposedly chosen to support, defend and enhance artistic communities and cultural values, fell into line.
This week Rudd and Iemma were both given the opportunity to reflect on their knee-jerk responses. “I stand by that reaction and I don’t apologise for it,” said Rudd while Iemma said: “Yes I do (stand by my original statement). It’s offensive and disgusting.” Both resolutely staying on message. The minders win.
Johnston has clamped onto the Henson affair like a limpet mine. She won’t let go. Avid fans of SMH writer Alan Ramsey will recall his coverage of the downfall of the former Governor-General Peter Hollingworth and the terrier-like role played by Johnston as she played the media like an accomplished conductor.
Her national management committee includes Queensland ALP general secretary Milton Dick; her NSW management committee includes Labor MP Virginia Judge, Liberal MP Anthony Roberts, recently promoted to shadow juvenile justice minister, and federal MP Bronwyn Bishop; and one of her ambassadors-at-large is broadcaster Ray Hadley who has been a pack leader in witch-hunting Henson on 2GB, part-owned by Alan Jones.
The episode is a demonstration of the networking of media reactionaries like Devine, Hadley, Piers Akerman et al, the fear they strike into the hearts of Rudd, Iemma, arts ministers and supine attorneys-general who are in office but don’t have a clue about how to govern or lead, and the authoritarian law enforcement agencies which, as always and ever, will seize the opportunity to smash down doors and push back the boundaries of high culture which they instinctively regard as subversive and dangerous.
Distinguished art critic John McDonald told Radio National this morning the affair made Australia look like “a nation of clowns”. If only it was that funny.
It is perhaps a truism to say that if it were not for the internet this controversy would not have blown up. Just as many careers have no doubt been blighted by improvident facebook or blog entries, the rather bigger facebook that is the internet may, sadly, be about to claim, or to go close to claiming, some big scalps – just because the (Commonwealth) law of internet publication is so much stricter than the (NSW) law applicable to physical dissemination.
Against this background, does it strike anyone else as a bit off that the kind of ‘model release’ the young model would normally be expected to sign would cover all media throughout the world at the photographer’s (or his representatives’) absolute discretion – including republication on The Age website in the context of a news story (that publication in itself presents a question: was it considered by The Age to be covered by the fair dealing copyright exception for news? or licensed by Henson himself?) – far beyond the original context of an exhibition or a book? Perhaps cases such as these will give a spur to the law of invasion of privacy; they might even lead to the granting to that pretty largely put-upon class, models, of an inalienable moral right to prevent their own images from being used in highly embarassing or inappropriate contexts. Call it Paris’ law, if you must.
Doesn’t the art / porn debate miss the point? I don’t think Henson is porn but I don’t think that matters. The real issue is whether or not he can be convicted of producing child porn. As the law currently stands I believe he can be.
The criminal law is not here to help. It exists to convicted people of criminal offences. The conviction rate is generally 90% (or higher if my memory serves me right). Admittedly this includes pleas of guilty but it demonstrates the criminal law is not about the rights of the defendant. It is about how the law defines certain actions or behaviour.
The disturbing ingredient is government activity in the area of sex offences. Laws targeting sex offences are popular. Everybody hates sex offender particularly evil peadophiles. If a government expands powers to deal with sex offending it is generally seen as a good thing. Hence governments have introduced a whole range of laws to deal with sex offences in recent years.
The problem is the thinking that underlies the popularity of these laws. We sexually normal Australians would never be guilty of the kind of behaviour these aberrant types engage in. Putting aside the question of what is sexually “normal”, as a result the laws in Victoria and NSW have now become so broad that it was only a matter of time before people well outside of the usual target demograhic of the criminal law were hit.
We have allowed our law to develop to this point. The fault Brutus is not in the stars but in ourselves.
Oh goodness gracious me !
In India, with the oldest religion on earth, children have been running around naked in villages for thousands of years.. the young body is revered in all forms in art, literature and on temple walls. In Africa, young children live and play naked in most villages, there are so many pictures of nude young African girls in tribal dance, in documentaries and in our museums and galleries. In Australia, indigenous children and teenagers frolic around naked in their communities, and the white man has photographed them without their consent on countless occasions.
Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia & medieval Europe idolized, glorified, gave artistic merit to the young body, the youth. The ancient emergent adolescent and can be seen in all major world Art Galleries and Institutions. The young body has always been admired, respected and abstracted to reveal its inner beauty, its strange precocious innocence , the twilight of childhood and dawn of adulthood… yet in ‘modern’ Australia, the prudes have taken control and white man is vilifying one of his own kind for phographing white youth nude in artistic poses. Young white flesh is thus sacrosant. The paedophile lurks in every corner, lying latent within each man, ready to spring up at the mere sight of a nude white youth.
Beware ! lbeware ! Lock up your children, cover your women… Islam has been warning the West for so long. Yet the West mocked them, how dare they let women cover up behind a burqa ? What religious zealots they are. What prudes. Oh, did you forget about the terrible, ‘disgusting’ cartoons drawn by that horrific Danish artist, depicting the Prophet Muhammed ! How dare he. He must be killed. An instant Fatwah is declared. Yes, Australians totally agreed with their Muslim brothers, never laughed or called them Religious Fanatics, did we ?
Oops, hold on, isn’t someone’s foot in their mouth now ? Or shoe in the wrong foot ?
Oh, we also forgot about our basic constitutional rights, of the right to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, of the rights to practice one’s profession, and of an assumption of innocence until proven guilty. Of the application of a due legal process, of all facts and evidence to be considered before someone is prosecuted. I thought we used to have Trial by Jury.. but it’s become Trial by Media and now, Trial by Prime Minister .
Well written, Alex Mitchell, and well exposed !
The pictures were of unclothed or provocatively clothed 12 and 13 year old girls (don’t live in Australia, so haven’t had a chance to see for myself)? No argument. Shouldn’t have happened and shouldn’t have been exhibited. Even if the artist had no overtly unsavory intentions, you have to wonder at a middle aged man posing a pubescent girl like this. Unless he is completely degenerate he should have realized that these images would have/could have been inflammatory to people with intentions far from benign. Surely, too, an adult male of a certain age should have recognized that, intrinsically, this sort of thing is degrading to all women? Remember the old feminist argument that this sort of thing is exploitative? What’s changed?
Still more does one wonder at the girl’s parents allowing it; indeed, what sort of parents would encourage a child to believe that posing like this is acceptable and even desirable? How is this not exploitative? And exploitation of children by adults in any way is disgusting, even more so if the adults in question are the parents.
Any defence of these photos claiming ‘artistic merit’ or ‘artistic freedom’ is spurious and anyone trotting these out would do well to crawl out of low ground and at least think about aspiring to something approaching a moral rather than a fashionable standpoint.
Alex Mitchell argues, with good circumstantial evidence (RRNs, timing etc—and really, could one hope for anything better than circumstantial evidence?) that the outrage over Henson is feigned and has been consciously provoked to distract the public from the sleaze surrounding Milton Orkopoulos.
And what sort of response has he garnered?
|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|***|
Comments, categorized and broken down:
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS COACHES°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
{favourite phrase: “End of Story”. Full of exhortations and appeals to “common sense”. Rhetorical questions always answered. All issues black and white. “I’m not here to debate this point with you”. Nothing in particular wrong with these people as sports coaches, but their tendency to talk through megaphones and inability to reflect on their own judgments makes them terrible cultural commentators}
Examples:
steve martin
Frankly I am getting a little pissed off about the Henson affair both pro and anti, and Alex Mitchell’s piece is the last straw for me…
I might haste to say that I have not seen any of Henson’s work, indeed I had never heard of him prior to the furore that has been created by this exhibition…
Michael
you are not allowed to photograph a naked child. End of story… Debate the law if you think photographing pubescent children is something that should be generally allowed.
Hugh
Groan. How much more of this tripe do we have to put up with? It’s not a left v right issue, nor an issue of artists v philistines. The only questions involved are whether a 12 or 13 year old child can consent to having his or her nude body exploited for profit by an artist, and whether the community has a duty to protect its most vulnerable members from such exploitation. End of story.
Nev Parker
If Michaelangelo [this is a hypothetical argument] were to ask me, could he paint my 13 year old daughter ‘au naturel’ — he’d soon be wearing a canvas and paint brush hat which would be a lot less painful than a Canon shoved up his ‘you know what’ today
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°HYSTERICS°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
{Characteristics: Pure vitriol. Indignation starts with an implicit claim to to the moral high ground, continue on with sarcasm, degenerate into direct abuse and end in incoherent rage. These people are unbearable and best avoided}
Examples:
JamesK
So……I take it Alex Mitchell thinks everybody who believes that these images are concerning should simply forget their concerns or reflect again until they see the light (probably the same luminescence that he assumes shines from his gargantuan hindquarters). What an arrogant tosser! Note that he has not even deigned to provided one single argument to support this arrogance……probably because that would be unnecessary?
Libby Arnold
Photographing naked 13 year olds sounds like pedophilia to me. And manipulative. How will these young people feel in 10 years time when their photos are still floating around on the internet? Shame on Bill Henson!
pattie tancred
The pictures were of unclothed or provocatively clothed 12 and 13 year old girls (don’t live in Australia, so haven’t had a chance to see for myself)? No argument. Shouldn’t have happened and shouldn’t have been exhibited…crawl out of low ground and at least think about aspiring to something approaching a moral rather than a fashionable standpoint.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°PONCES°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
{Characteristics: Love looking like connoisseurs. Gratuitous gushing public expressions of aesthetic appreciation that are somewhat creepy. Contributions tend to be counterproductive (John McDonald is also an example of this)}
Examples:
gurugee
Oh goodness gracious me ! In India, with the oldest religion on earth, children have been running around naked in villages for thousands of years.. the young body is revered in all forms in art, literature and on temple walls. In Africa, young children live and play naked in most villages, there are so many pictures of nude young African girls in tribal dance, in documentaries and in our museums and galleries. In Australia, indigenous children and teenagers frolic around naked in their communities, and the white man has photographed them without their consent on countless occasions. Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia & medieval Europe idolized, glorified, gave artistic merit to the young body, the youth. The ancient emergent adolescent and can be seen in all major world Art Galleries and Institutions. The young body has always been admired, respected and abstracted to reveal its inner beauty, its strange precocious innocence , the twilight of childhood and dawn of adulthood…
<