On practical level I can't pick up the camera until I think I know what I want. I don't wander around. It's almost impossible for me to pick up a camera... it's really hard.
Bill HensonWhat happens with experiences that really move us deeply, that really effect us? They make the world new again. What it does is it heightens our sense of mortality.
Bill HensonMeaning coming from feeling, feeling coming from within, you absorb a massive amount of information, it goes through your whole body, a little bit of it floats up to your head where there is deliberation. You are conditioned by the way your whole body is responding to what is going on.
Bill HensonI could be standing in the supermarket, and there is a person standing down the aisle, who is reading the back of a cornflakes box but everything about them is going "It's me! I'm the one you want! I am the necessary subject. This is it!"
Bill HensonAs a boy I was obsessed with Egypt and Egyptology. I'm convinced it's not that uncommon. A lot of 10 or 12 year old boys become obsessed with Egypt. It's a bit like young girls and horses.
Bill HensonFor all the textbook reasons - any individual's reading of a photograph is preceded by the evidential authority of the medium. You have the literalness of a glass on a table - and at the same time of that evidential authority that you can't get around, there is the possibility of universalizing the subject - of getting the whole world into the picture.
Bill Henson