BILL HENSON

From Lux et Nox
2002

In a photograph, we have simultaneously an absolute presence in the evidential authority of the medium and an entirely impossible dreamscape.

What draws you in is what slips away.

And yet, this longing persists - this lack of connection to someone or something.

The sweet expression of a face, eyes cast down, thoughts turned inward...Such things send us back into a different space, but remarkably it's always our own.

Now as the light form a row of TV screens blends with the last rays of the sun, both play over a face staring into a shop window, and as the sound of the mall dies away, imagine as that face curves off into shadow.

Turn ever so slightly, a single camera movement brings the distant lights of a freeway into view, blinking through the darkening forest.

And the sun goes down behind the mountains.

- Bill Henson