Image: One of Yang's most famous photos, called 'Alter Ego'. Source: Sydney Festival
Photographer and community icon William Yang has been named the recipient of the ACON President’s Award — a lifetime achievement honour — at the 2025 Honour Awards.
The award is presented to an individual whose life’s work has deeply influenced the health, visibility, and wellbeing of LGBTQIA+ communities across NSW.
“The President’s Award is reserved for those whose lifetime contribution has reshaped how our communities see themselves and are seen by others,” said ACON President Justin Koonin in a statement.
“William Yang has used his camera for over 50 years to give us an archive of love, loss, defiance and connection. His work always honours the joys and the sorrows of queer life and helps to ensure that our stories are remembered and valued.”
Yang reflected on the recognition with humility and gratitude.
“For much of my life, photography has given me the opportunity to document and chronicle the lives of LGBTQ communities over many decades,” he said. “I have been privileged to capture the resilience, creativity and beauty of our people, as well as the challenges.
“Through images and stories, I have sought to create a collection that honours our history and helps future generations understand where we have come from. To receive this award is a deeply satisfying recognition of that journey.”
The presentation of the award will take place as part of the ACON 40 Ruby Gala, the flagship event in this year’s ACON 40 program that marks 40 years of community health, care and activism.
The life, art, and LGBTQ+ legacy of William Yang
William Yang is considered one of Australia’s most vital visual storytellers and queer arts pioneers.
Born in North Queensland in 1943, Yang moved to Sydney in the 1970s, where he became deeply embedded in the city’s cultural and queer life. Over decades, his camera has captured the ordinary and extraordinary moments of LGBTQIA+ existence.
Yang’s photography is intimate yet expansive. He chronicled the glinting nights of Oxford Street and the vibrancy of Mardi Gras, but also bore witness to darker chapters: the AIDS crisis, loss, stigma. His work has always given voice and image to our community which was, for so long, written out of mainstream archives.
Beyond still images, Yang developed a signature performance-storytelling form, blending projections of his photographs with personal narration. On stage, his work becomes part memoir, part community history — inviting viewers into queer lives, often untold, and knitting together memory, identity and emotion.
In Sydney, Yang’s work helped shift public imagination. His lens made visible what was often invisible: the tender complexity of queer lives, the textures of friendship, desire, grief, resilience. His archive lives in the collections of major institutions including the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
For LGBTQIA+ community in NSW and beyond, Yang’s legacy is a living reminder that our stories matter.
You can learn more about William Yang via some of Star Observer‘s archival coverage here, here and here.
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