This is not porn, say Henson's models

Zahava Elenberg was 12 when she posed for a series of dark and evocative photographs taken by Bill Henson.

More than 20 years later she still has vivid memories of working with the artist, but "absolutely no regrets"."Bill asked my mother at an exhibition opening if I would like to pose for him and we talked about it and decided to do it," says Ms Elenberg, now a 34-year-old mother. "We went to this old building in Melbourne. It was quite dark but I never felt uncomfortable. Bill made you feel incredibly safe and calm. I was involved in the artistic process and I never felt that I wasn't in control.

"I absolutely support Bill Henson. I'm a parent myself and I abhor child pornography, but this is not child pornography. It's artistic and creative."

Ms Elenberg did not pose nude - she and her mother had decided that "under no circumstances" would she take her clothes off, even though they said Henson did not directly ask her.

All the women who have spoken to the Herald about posing for Henson tell a similar story. They paint a picture of a Melbourne artistic community where it is common for artists and photographers to approach parents to ask if their children will be part of their next project.

"She [Ms Elenberg] was brought up with artists - this kind of thing was just normal, it is normal," says Ms Elenberg's mother, Anna Schwartz, a gallery owner. "Through our involvement with his work and our friendship he said he'd like to take photographs of my daughter and we agreed.

"She was involved in the whole process. She was encouraged to look through the lens and to learn about the artistic process."

Joelle Baudet, who posed naked for Henson as a 24-year-old, said she was approached by the photographer at a gallery opening in the mid-1990s.

"The experience was enlightening. It never crossed my mind that what I was doing was pornographic," Ms Baudet said.

"His work is sublime and only a warped mind could associate it with such crassness. My children and I enjoy seeing his photographs daily in our home.

"He's always had total consent from his subjects and their families and would never have made any of his models do anything they were uncomfortable with."

While Henson made efforts to ensure that his young subjects and their parents were comfortable and informed, child advocates say no one can consent to such a practice.

"It is clear from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that parents do not have the right to make that decision on behalf of their children," the chief executive of Child Wise, Bernadette McMenamin, said.

"And children, at the age of 12, 13 or 14, do not have the experience or the understanding to make an informed consent. They don't understand how those images will be used or re-used. When they're 18 or 20 or 30 they may look back and say, 'My god, I made a mistake.' "