William Yang combines theatre and photography in China.
William Yang shares his photographs and insights in China
Growing up in Australia award-winning photographer William Yang’s mother wasn’t really one for multiculturalism encouraging her children to be “more Australian than the Australians.” It wasn’t until he was in his mid-30s that Yang started to discover his Chinese heritage and take an interest in his traditional homeland culminating in his first visit to the old country in 1989.
Since that time Yang has been back to China seven times cobbling together a monologue and a slide show of his photographs that is equal parts visual art and theatre.
“I was a playwright and found I couldn’t make a living writing plays” says Yang. “I turned to photography and found that I could make a living as a photographer. About 15 years after that in the mid-80s I started to do projection which led me to performance pieces in the late ’80s. That brought theatre and photography together again.”
Yang’s presentation of China focuses on his tenuous relationship with the country — his fascination with its history and culture and his permanent status as a semi-accepted outsider.
The performance not only allows Yang to spin tales but forces the audience to focus on his work something that can be challenging at a traditional photography show. “At exhibitions and I’m very guilty of this you tend to skim over works because you know you’ve got to meet someone at the café in 10 minutes or something” he says. “Whereas here you’ve paid your money and you’re there for the 90 minutes so you’re much more likely to come on the journey. You just give it more attention; that’s one of the beauties of the format.”
Yang’s photography is often raw thankfully lacking some of the digital wizardry popular today. His portfolio features parties portraits landscapes and travel. It is a documentary style that concentrates on the social context of the subject. His preferred and most celebrated work depicts the gay scene in Sydney the other side of Yang’s dual outsider identity.
“Digital photography has changed photography. I’m actually just trying to keep ahead of the pack because that’s very much my style of photography like everybody’s profile in Facebook really” he says.
“In fact that’s my favourite type of photography a kind of diary style but it’s got to be a bit more than me me me…. Because a lot of my stories involve the fact that I’m Chinese and I’m gay it can have a cultural context as well. So that’s how I kind of see my stories these personal stories within wider social and cultural contexts.”
Since starting his monologue performances in 1989 Yang has noticed a shift in his style. Instead of taking a single photograph to be hung on a gallery wall he shoots series of photographs with a mind towards telling a story.
And the monologues are ever-evolving as well. “It’s almost like musical phrasing after you’ve done it a lot you begin to see the whole shape of the story and you kind of form it in larger phrases or you phrase the story differently. There are bigger arcs that you think of the story in rather than just moment to moment.”
