Collection Online

Untitled 1985-86
(1985-1986)
from the Untitled 1985/86 series 1985-86

Medium
type C photograph
Measurements
106.5 × 88.3 cm
Accession Number
1995.445
Department
Australian Photography
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by ICI Australia Limited, Fellow, 1995
© Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Professor AGL Shaw AO Bequest
Gallery location
Not on display
Physical description
From Henson's 'Untitled 1985/86 series' in which he takes suburbia as his theme. He brings a disorienting perspective to the ubiquitous subject matter of life in the suburbs by intensifying the everyday to the point where it becomes unfamiliar. For instance, in his image of children at play in front of houses Henson uses a camera with a long focal lens which compresses and flattens the usual perspective. He has also chosen to hotograph this scene at twilight - a time when form and content are ambiguous - and in rich, saturated colour, which helps transform the documentary particularities of the scene into an image redolent with romanticism. When he exhibited the 154 works that comprise this series Henson juxtaposed images of suburbia with photographs of ancient Egyptian architecture and oversize portraits of people. The latter photographs - of which the girls face on offer is a fine example - act like grave himan sentinels related in some intangible way to the impassive images of past and prsent human settlement.