William Yang photographs and ephemera relating to exhibitions, and social life in Sydney in the 1970s

PXD 1580

fonds

approximately 1970-2013

Graphic Materials, Photographs, Posters, Objects

9665312

47 photographic prints (6 boxes), includes 2 posters - gelatin silver
1 stamp - rubber

William Yang (b. 1943) is an Australian photographer known in particular for his documentation of the Sydney LGBTIQ+ community from the beginnings of the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s, through to the inauguration of the Sydney Mardi Gras in 1978, and before the AIDS crisis struck in the 1980s.

Born in Mareeba, North Queensland in 1943, he relocated to Sydney in 1969. After working as a playwright with an experimental theatre company in the early to mid-1970s, Yang started taking photographs of his friends, and the society leaders and celebrities he saw at openings and parties. Yang’s connections to the theatre and the creative arts produced landmark portraits of sitters such as artists Martin Sharp and Brett Whiteley; designers Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee; theatre director Jim Sharman; and their friends and collaborators. From 1974, Yang began selling his images to magazines, and from the 1990s Yang began augmenting his most iconic images with handwritten scripts.

Yang's first exhibition, Sydneyphiles, at the Australian Centre for Photography in 1977, established Yang (then Willy Young) as the preeminent freelance photographer and social documenter of the period. It is also acknowledged to be the first Australian exhibition to publicly display images reflecting Sydney's emerging gay scene, its personalities and lifestyle.

The photographs in this collection were all shot between 1975 and 1979, and form part of Yang’s broader archive of images created during the first phase of his career as one of Sydney’s premier social chroniclers. They also reflect Yang’s creative process which involves the revisiting of his photographs over time, using hindsight to recompose their meaning through text.

References:
Library acquisition file
National Portrait Gallery, William Yang b. 1943, https://www.portrait.gov.au/people/william-yang-1943

This collection comprises original 1970s photoprints, later numbered editioned prints and/or exhibition prints from the photographer’s personal archive, with associated printed ephemera and realia relating to the Sydneyphiles exhibition staged at the Australian Centre for Photography in June/July 1977, and other exhibitions documenting Sydney social life in the 1970s with particular reference to the LGBTQI+community.

Many photoprints are signed, dated and stamped. Some bear the photographer’s characteristic handwritten captions.