I know what Henson’s on about because I used to be a pubescent girl and I know what it’s like for one’s body to start to turn into something that is suddenly of interest to men and boys, sometimes really horrible men and boys. One used to be invisible and now one is visible, sometimes scarily, distressingly so. The photos explore that phenomenon.

They also throw back on the viewer his/her own response to the images, in a way that is unsettling. What to make of this? How to respond? Who’s the innocent and who is the guilty?

In addition, our culture has profoundly ambivalent feelings about children. We don’t really like them much and call them ‘rug rats’ and ‘ankle biters’, treating them like vermin or a form of toxic by-product. When they are little we can be somewhat sentimental about their innocence and cuteness and we try to make amends for our dislike by elaborate displays of commitmetn to ‘child protectiion’.

When children turn into teenagers that goes and they are recast as monsters and troublemakers. In that role they bear the brunt of all our projections of our undesirable urges and feelings: aggression, violence, self indulgence, drunkenness, sexiness….

Bill Hensons’s young model stands on that cusp between the ‘cute’ and the reprehensible. She has not asked either to become the focus of men’s unsettling attention nor the symbol of society’s baser urges, but she has, by dint to her changing body.

The trouble is all in our heads and Bill Henson has shoved our noses in it, naughty man.

All a bit subtle to those who think in cliches, including the ‘abuse’ cliche.