Bill Henson's portfolio presents beautiful and often uncomfortable ideas though images.  Using a masterly range of photographic techniques provide paths to explorations of identity and the harshness of the crowd.. The use figures, people,  throughout his career is one of its strongest assets.  Most notably these appear in the (officially Untitled) series’; ‘Junkies’ (1977-79), ‘Crowds’ (1980-82), ‘Diptychs’ (1983-84) and his later cut screens.

In the period between 1977-1979, Henson created an untitled series of photographs about youth. This portrayal of youth exposes a forgotten generation – a group without identity that had been discarded by society.  Overexposed images of  naked adolescents appear bruised, malnourished and destitute.  Their faces are often blurred and partially shadowed so that we cannot clearly distinguish their features.  Through this the subjects remain anonymous, rarely looking at the camera directly.  Their poses seem undirected, vulnerable and allow the view a spy like intimacy.  Outwardly blank or neutral expression suggest that the subject is gazing inwards rather then into the world of the viewer.

Unlike many photos that try to capture a point in time, this series does not allow us any assurance of its place in time or space.  This ambiguity is partially a product of Henson’s darkroom technique.  He used a method of hand agitation during print development that created an uneven tone throughout the print.  This and processing/toning procedure effectually remove the extra detail that allows us to pinpoint the image’s origins.

Henson’s use of light adds an eerie and unnatural texture to his subject.  In an earlier series (1974 untitled sequence) this make for an oil painting like graininess that echoes the work of the old master, Vemer.  In the black and white ‘Junkies’ series, the light contrasts with a murky darkness to make the beings seem translucent and ghostly.  Their flesh is almost disintegrating into pure light and shadow.  The intended blurriness of the pieces accentuates this ethereal quality making it seem as if the people glow from within and ready to transcend their squalor..

The subjects are naked but are only suggestive in their despair and disconnectedness.  The composition is effective but in a contradiction, does not express a feeling of having been composed.  That is, you don’t often see naked junkies lying around waiting to be photographed!  All of this removes these images from out reality.  They are simultaneously beautiful and grotesque in their state of degradation.

In 1980-82, Henson produced a series of ‘Crowd’ photographs.  The figures in these images, while this time containing many people in a shot, remained anonymous to the camera.  These explore the concept of being alone in a crowd.  Again, the gaze ignores the lens.  Each shot is crammed with people but each figure is independent of the others, seemingly having its own agenda.  They are indifferent to one another and to the viewer, even if they are moving in the same direction.  Yet they often seem to be focused on something else. Something Henson does not allow us to see.  As is consistent through Henson’s work, the exact placement and meaning of each piece is equivocal.  These scenes could have been shot anywhere in the world, at almost any time this century.  We are present with soft, blurred images like the junkies except there seem to be more grey tones and a greater feeling of being crowded.  The subjects are unposed and these frozen moment convey a feeling of realism while the distortion of the prints makes the unreal.

In the 1982-84 series, Henson created diptychs and triptychs interposing junkies (our disembodied youth) with the opulence of baroque architecture.  This disparity between the stripped down earthy honesty of the junkies and the uselessly decadent baroque style highlights a material class difference.  It also brings together other lines of division: the sublime and the repellent, the innocent and corrupt.  Why should the rich remain in luxury while the poor suffer?  The poor junkies in these sets are photographed in the same style as his earlier series on the subject (stage but natural, honest and eerie).  However, some are now slightly coloured which makes them a little more earthly.  The light gives them a painted quality although they seem a little less ghostly wile the baroque shots are clear and unemotional in comparison.  While the junkies are naked, degraded and shadowed, they are much more real then the cold presence of the architecture.  This comparison makes the viewer find commonality with the down trodden.

Henson’s latest work has been in creating ‘Cut Screens’.  In these works (e.g. 1994-95 Untitled series) Henson cuts up and reforms pictures in a type of collage.  Unlike his earlier works, these pieces are in colour.  They feature naked figures juxtaposed with scenes of a metropolis, car wrecks, nightlife and sunsets.  Unlike the Dada movement of the 1930’s, Henson’s composition is carefully constructed.  The figures allude to classical styles.  In all the chaos of intermeshed scenes, blank spots and the tape that holds it together, these pieces unify all of their element into a singly order.  Once again we are drawn away to a dreamland of naked people who seem to swoon in excess, the light making their flesh seem like stone.  In the background, darkness or sunsets of otherwise something unreal.  The figures are sprawled across the scene.  It is fractured, violent and despairing.

“These images of surrender but to what forces we do not know: we are merely witnesses to the wreckage, to the way someone stands, head bowed, waiting; to a hand splayed against a naked back; to a man and a woman whose bodies gleam in their embrace with a pale translucent light.  This is the meaning of Henson’s collage; everything happens at once according to some irrevocable destiny.  We may not know what this destiny is, but the resonance of Henson’s images tells us it exists,”*

The people that live in Bill Henson’s lens seem lost in their own dream world, having given up on the real one.  Maybe even voluntarily.  The more you look at them, the less important the subjects become.  Instead we receive a disturbing overall feeling of raw emotion.
“…these people, whom we cannot know, whom we never knew, somehow are us as we stand before the work, attending to their silence.  The semblance, magnified and beautiful, of out own concentrated gaze lies before us on the wall.”*
 

*Lewis, Ann & Hall, Doug (1995), Venice Biennale Catalogue