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[capture] sep_oct.19CONTACT
Bill Henson http://www.instagram.com/billhensonphotoHe also has a complex attitude to
social media. He appreciates it as a
remarkable collection of tools, but
feels a certain amount of disdain for
what it has done to sociability. He has
an Instagram and a Facebook account,
neither of which he began or
maintains. His Instagram account was begun by someone who wanted
to work with him, approached him and offered to run it for him. “Of
course, there’s no reason not to have it. I just don’t have the time to run
it all,” he says. It’s the same with Facebook. The Bill Henson Facebook
fan page was set up by a “bunch of kids”, he recalls. Henson had no
idea it existed for three years. Those “kids” now include a senior editor
at Penguin Books in New York. “I just don’t have the mental space for
it,” Henson admits. “I’m really busy listening to a particular passage of
music and staring at the picture I’m trying to make. I’m sure at a
practical level the trickle-down effect has been wonderful, with people
who might otherwise not see my work having access to it, but it’s not
something I’m able to spend time on.”
As for the role that social media has acquired in everyday life, again
Henson is wary of the way it has distorted how people interact. “Social
media is our own personal white noise to some extent. It’s sending
people into a state of perpetual distraction and being constantly in
touch isn’t always being meaningfully connected. ‘Where are you?’ ‘In
the freezer section at IGA.’ There’s a kind of connectedness which is
actually becoming a kind of disconnectedness,” he explains.
The most interesting
picture to me is the
one I’m working on atthe time.
people profile
Comfortable in one’s skin
Henson feels no difficulty in choosing his favourite work, however.
“The most interesting picture to me is the one I’m working on at the
time,” he states. “I know that’s a boring answer, but it is always the
thing that’s absorbing most of my attention. It’s exciting because I’m
not sure if I’m going to be able to pull it off. Maybe it’s going to be
amazing, maybe it’s going to be hopeless. That whole ‘could be
incredible, but probably won’t be’ is compelling.” He doesn’t feel that he
has a great phase, a naïve phase, or a phase he’d rather forget. “Looking
back, I have no problems with the work I made when I was nineteen,
twenty, or thirty-five. It’s simply what I did then. There’s this kind of
crazy fascist revisionism that sometimes takes hold of people where
they want to destroy all of the things they did when they were young so
they can be seen as someone who sprang fully formed at the age of
thirty-three, or whatever, like a goddess from the sea. It’s just stupid.
I’m perfectly prepared to live with the work I made when I was
younger. But certainly, the thing that I’m trying to get out of my head
and onto a piece of paper now is my favourite picture.”
It is incredibly difficult for any artists to remain relevant for four
decades. Henson has. He has not bowed to fads or fashions. He has
maintained his craft largely in the way that shaped his talent. He has
stayed true to his style, the subjects that fascinate him, and his passion
for achieving that one amazing image from the many he begins.ABOVE: Untitled
2017-18.
HW-SV SH52
N7D
Archival inkjet
pigment print
127 x 180 cm
Edition of 5 + 2
APcontinued from page 26