Untitled 1997/2000

Bill Henson’s enigmatic photographs admit the viewer to a heightened reality where figures dwell in an ambiguous relationship to their surrounds – and to the photographer’s gaze. With a visual style characterised by the dramatic use of velvet-darkness and partial illumination, Henson’s images of pale-skinned figures in a desolate urban environment evoke a sense of otherworldly beauty and unease.

This specific photograph could be seen to reference late 16th and early 17th century Italian painter Annibale Carracci's paintings of a boy drinking, and both Carracci and his contemporary Caravaggio's plays of light and shadow over form. This work is beautifully composed and structured: the dance of light over the boy's upstretched arm and torso; the centrality of the boy in the wide fathomless darkness, set against the spectral figure in the shadows; and the sharp diagonal of the implement in the foreground, which cuts across the boy's lower torso.