The Photography
of William Yang:
Words & Images
A major new retrospective, William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen, examines the significant contribution of the seminal photographer whose 50-year practice celebrates the LGBTQI+ scene of the late ’70s and ’80s through to the present, via an Asian Australian lens. VAULT spoke to Yang about the important moments in his career.
Image credit: William Yang, Tamarama Lifesavers, 1981, inkjet print. Courtesy the artist and Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane © William Yang
William, over 50 years you have told the story of your own life, but also the story of Australia in all its diversity. This major retrospective brings together the dominant themes of your career. Was that a curatorial decision or something that you wanted to see come together?
I did have clear categories, yes. The exhibition begins with my early story –
I was born in North Queensland. I was part of the Chinese Australian community. One of the key images tells the famous story that was a big point in my life, where one of the kids at school called me ‘Ching Chong Chinaman’. I ran home to my mother, and I said to her, “I’m not Chinese, am I?” My mother said, “Yes, you are.” I knew in that moment that being Chinese was like a terrible curse. That was a formative moment (in my life). I had an Aunt Bessie who was the matriarch of the family, who lived in Cairns; she was my mother’s older sister. She had a husband called William Fang Yuen, who I only later found out was murdered. That became one of my stories, as I looked into my uncle’s murder. That early part of the exhibition embraces my growing up in North Queensland. Then I moved to Sydney,
and I came out as a gay man in the 1970s.
I became a social photographer. That’s when I mixed with celebrities and the artistic community in Sydney. We’ve included a big wall of Mardi Gras photographs, because that tells a story
in a theatrical way and covers diversity –
all races, and genders...Subscribe to read this article in full
