A decade on, Bill Henson refuses to be hardened by firestorm

Compared with the timeless quality of Bill Henson’s photographs, the events of a decade ago must seem a mere snapshot in time.

Bill Henson with his new exhibition of photographic works at Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Compared with the timeless ­quality of Bill Henson’s large-­format photographs of landscapes, ruins and human figures, the events of a decade ago must seem a mere snapshot in time.

Henson will today open a show of new pictures in Melbourne, 10 years after police raided an exhibition in Sydney and he was accused of making child pornography ­because of his use of naked models who were minors at the time.

He was not charged with any crime, no models complained of working with him and images of his work published online were rated “very mild” by the Classification Board.

“At the centre of that storm, it was very quiet, because I knew perfectly well what my relationship with the models was,” Henson said at Tolarno Galleries yesterday. “I had no qualms about any of the issues that were being raised.”

Reflecting on the events of May 2008 — during which Kevin Rudd described the photographs as ­“revolting” without having seen them — Henson said he had tried to keep a sense of proportion and a long view of history. In discussions with art students, he maintained such episodes should not destroy an artist’s sensitivity to the world around them.

Police in 2008 seize works described by Kevin Rudd as ‘revolting’.

“When you are being pilloried, or whatever it is, it’s very important not to harden up,” he said. “The tendency is to toughen up, and develop a hard exterior. You must always try not to do that, ­because the harder that shell ­becomes, the less sensitive you are going to be to the beauty and complexity of the world around you.”

The exhibition of untitled works includes evocative images of Roman architecture, brooding landscapes and figure studies of two youths who are aged 12 or 13 in some pictures. It is his first commercial gallery show for seven years. It follows several years of wanting to “go off into my world and not think about preparing work for exhibition”.

He did not believe the quality of public conversation had improved since 2008: “There’s a righteous tone, a creeping cartoon rhetoric which seems to want to divide everything into black and white, when we all know that in our heart of hearts that most of life is grey.”