Allan - AGSA Collection

William Yang
Australia
1943

Allan
from the monologue Sadness
1990
19 gelatin-silver photographs

Place made: Sydney
Medium: 19 gelatin-silver photographs
Dimensions: 50.7 x 40.4 cm (each sheet)
Credit line: Gift of the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2019
Accession number: 20192Ph1(1-19)
Media category: Photograph
Collection area: Australian photographs
Copyright: © William Yang

WALL LABEL: Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography, 2016

While he initially aspired to be a playwright, since the mid-1970s Yang has made a career as a photographer. Many of his photographs document his social milieu in Sydney’s gay community over this period. Reflecting on his choice to pursue photography he wrote:

I don’t think I have a great technical aptitude but I am interested in people. I have a feeling for the theatre, for irony and for stories, the tragic comedy of our lives … Often I have felt in a privileged position where people have let me photograph them, have let me get close to them with a camera.

The series Allan is a tribute to his young friend Allan, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and who died less than two years later, in July 1990. By combining photographs of his ailing friend with his own written observations, Yang presents an intimate portrait while also revealing much about himself.

These images and texts also formed the basis of Yang’s slide monologue Sadness, which he has performed throughout Australia (including Adelaide in 1994) and internationally.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs

Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography

Art Gallery of South Australia, 5 February 2016 – 18 September 2016

William Yang 1943

Allan

1990

19 gelatin-silver photographs

Accession no: 20192Ph1(1-19)