Bill Henson’s large new photographs are landscapes of urban and suburban peripheries under the stress of overwhelming social and cultural forces. Although they appear to be dark documentary records—nighttime views of industrial and suburban sprawl near Melbourne—they are as contrived and manipulated as their lush, exaggerated chemical tones and the gimmicky, nearly blacked-out gallery installation. Henson’s earlier black-and-white photographs of figures standing in crowds were seen at the Guggenheim in 1984; they were a catalogue of urban resignation. His highly sensational polyptychs