Paris Opera

In the early 1990’s Bill Henson was commissioned by the Paris Opera to produce a series of works that were to bring the emotional effect of music into visual form. For the first time, all 50 images from the series are brought together as a delicately printed outsized monograph.

“Paris Opera is a development for Henson both in his use of colour and in the way he presents human faces in interplay through convention, the framing device, of the face intent on music: whether in appreciation or indifference, or with an inscrutable self-possession. Watching faces, lit from below, sit in half-light suggests that the only illumination comes from the stage and what these faces suggest is always a revelation of some inwardness before the other event: the musical drama unfolding in front of their eyes. The drama of portraiture in response is instead intensely dramatic and Henson has done wonders to make his camera suggest the gradations and modulations of a painterly apprehension. It is drama full of shadow and chiaroscuro, of Rembrandtian depths of brown and gold and blackest green. French Fold Jacket / Silk screened end sheets / Dyed edges


2022. Hardcover. 31 x 31cm. 52 pages.