landscape of (human) desire

A comment on the Bill Henson photographic exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria

We'd rather not admit that we desire. Or better that desire is part of the landscape of our being. It is within our being and, thus, our bodies enclose it. Desire, however, is not meant to stay enclosed, rather it must flow. Desire moves from within and communicates with the wind, the world and the human spirit. It even touches the breath in a spoken word. Unspoken desire can be represented by art.

Viewing Bill Henson's photographs at the National Gallery of Victoria, I am first enthralled, and then unsure. I remind myself that it's possible to see beyond the art form, with it's aesthetic play. What I see in a photograph taken by Bill Henson is the quest to materialise the landscape of desire in the human body, where it naturally resides. Henson has selected the body of the tender-aged to play out desire. And, they do just that in a manner that is akin to a narcissistic enterprise, unaware that they are embodying desire. Unlike a Caravaggio portrait, the tender-aged subjects of a Bill Henson photograph display a fascination with the space between light and dark, twilight and dawn, body and desire, sensuality and spirit - or better the artist's desire to delve there and expose liminality. Even the Museum goers, who are the subject of  the concomitant set of photographs in the exhibition, hanging side by side the 'tender-aged' works, are unaware that their desire is captured as they view the exhibition pieces; indeed they are taken by the classical era statues representing the form of the human body. The Museum goers would not have chosen such a location for the expression (albeit unconscious) of their desire, the artist has chosen it; he has created a meta-narrative.

Thus, as viewers, we see  the artist's location of desire in the photographs, which is not within his body, but in the respective bodies of a set of subjects - subjects who are just learning, if they are fortunate enough to be aware, that desire is both personal and powerful. And, that the gaze is the most powerful way to express desire, but also to capture the desire of another human being and make it one's own. When the Museum goer takes a photograph of a statue that strikes them, and then shows it, whose desire are they communicating? Has anyone ever understood the discourse of the (male/corporate/religious) gaze as a means of power over a woman (and not only), through the objectification of her being? I dare say the debate continues. Consider this, if the gaze is taken away from the subject being photographed, in this case the tender-aged who are expressing inwardly directed desire and the Museum goers who are expressing the desire of a curious gaze, whose desire is being enacted? Can a photograph's subject have full possession of their power? Are they capable of being protective of the intimate space from where their desire flows? Can they see how it reaches outward, in the flow of exchange, allowing  them to belong to the world of relations? Can they value this?

The photographs of Bill Henson do not set out to answer these questions. Rather they capture the artist's desire to locate an intimate sphere from which the desire of another being might be viewed. A sphere which is inaccessible, and about which art can only approximate its existence, that is represent it through the lens of the artist. It follows, then, that what is embodied in the absent and sublimated gaze of the subject is the image of the artist attempting to delineate a landscape of desire how best he can.

(C) Silvana Tuccio 13 March 2017