Australian police prevented the opening of a photography exhibition by Bill Henson at Roslyn Oxley9, a Sydney art gallery, on 22nd May. The exhibition included images of a naked twelve-year-old girl, and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described them as “absolutely revolting” in a TV interview with Channel 9’s Today on the morning after the police raid. The controversy led police to inspect Henson photographs at other Australian galleries, and the Albury Regional Art Gallery removed three photos (taken in 1985) from its Proof of Age exhibition on police advice.
David Marr’s The Henson Case is the definitive book on the incident, a day-by-day account of a media scandal. (The tabloid The Daily Telegraph’s headline on 23rd May was “CHILD PORN ‘ART’ RAID”, with scare quotes around the word ‘art’ rather than ‘porn’.) Marr criticises the artist’s decision to use “the most contentious image in Henson’s exhibition” on the opening-night invitations, which Henson admits was a mistake. This photo, no. 30 in a series of untitled portraits, is reproduced in the book. (The Director of Public Prosecutions ultimately concluded, in a statement on 5th June, that “mere nudity is not indecent in the legal sense.”)
Nude images of minors have been removed from galleries in the past, most recently a Nan Goldin photograph investigated, and subsequently exonerated, by UK police last year. Photographs of children by Robert Mapplethorpe, Graham Ovenden, Ron Oliver, Will McBride, David Hamilton, Tierney Gearon, and Annelies Strba have previously been investigated by UK police as potentially obscene. In America, the FBI investigated photographers Jacqueline Livingston and Jock Sturges, though ultimately no charges were brought.
David Marr’s The Henson Case is the definitive book on the incident, a day-by-day account of a media scandal. (The tabloid The Daily Telegraph’s headline on 23rd May was “CHILD PORN ‘ART’ RAID”, with scare quotes around the word ‘art’ rather than ‘porn’.) Marr criticises the artist’s decision to use “the most contentious image in Henson’s exhibition” on the opening-night invitations, which Henson admits was a mistake. This photo, no. 30 in a series of untitled portraits, is reproduced in the book. (The Director of Public Prosecutions ultimately concluded, in a statement on 5th June, that “mere nudity is not indecent in the legal sense.”)
Nude images of minors have been removed from galleries in the past, most recently a Nan Goldin photograph investigated, and subsequently exonerated, by UK police last year. Photographs of children by Robert Mapplethorpe, Graham Ovenden, Ron Oliver, Will McBride, David Hamilton, Tierney Gearon, and Annelies Strba have previously been investigated by UK police as potentially obscene. In America, the FBI investigated photographers Jacqueline Livingston and Jock Sturges, though ultimately no charges were brought.
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