William Yang Creates The Ultimate Self-Portrait In ‘Milestone’

As anyone even partially familiar with his work will tell you, William Yang is one of Australia’s most important and essential photographers. Yang’s body of work is mind-bendingly extensive; through the viewfinder, he’s captured everything from his upbringing in North Queensland as a third generation Chinese-Australian, Sydney’s blossoming gay scene in the 70s and 80s and the harrowing reality of the AIDS crisis, plus everything else in between and since.

How, then, do you capture the totality of your life and its many experiences in a succinct way? Appropriately for Yang, he chooses self-portraiture in his new show Milestone, an appropriately named work that truly feels like a window into Yang’s life owing to the power of his remarkable photography, highly personal words and music arranged by Elena Kats-Chernin.

Milestone starts as many life stories do: at the beginning in the town of Dimbulah, with a photo of a young William Yang dressed in an adorable costume. From here, Yang slowly introduces us to a number of key characters in his life – his parents, brother and sister – with an immediately disarming sense of warmth.

At 82 years old, Yang is incredibly spry and hilarious, with no qualms about letting us experience his life in reflection through his extensive image library. It’s remarkable to see a person’s whole life so wonderfully detailed on stage, owing to Yang’s special talent for storytelling. Rather appropriately, it can only ever feel like a snapshot, but it feels similar to looking intensely into the eyes of a photographed portrait; what isn’t explicitly told is nonetheless felt in the soul. 

William Yang tells a life in photos

Of course, Yang’s work in Sydney’s queer community is legendary – as he points out, his image series Sydneyphiles was the first time images of the Sydney gay community made their way to a photo gallery – and travelling back through time with him as he explains the context behind these highly influential images feels deeply poignant. 

Yet it’s only one part of the whole of Milestone, which takes a deeply bittersweet and nostalgic approach to Yang’s whole life. The most moving sections of the piece usually revolve around grief, as Yang recalls the deaths of family members or friends who he lost to AIDS. You may often be shocked by what Yang chose to photograph, but the results provide significant context for his approach to photography. 

This ties into an important element of Milestone; the photos that he shares say as much about Yang as they do his subjects, and are instrumental in creating that portrait of the artist. Yang also knows exactly when it’s right to let the photos and Elena Kats-Chermin’s music do all the required storytelling, resulting in a number of movements full of silent, powerful emotion.

A true late-in-life achievement for one of Australia’s most important and groundbreaking artists, William Yang: Milestone is an intimate, often heartbreaking and regularly hilarious portrait of a life as only William Yang could tell it. A truly life-affirming work, Yang creates a beautiful tapestry of both individual and collective humanity with this moving late-career masterpiece of storytelling that’ll have you thinking about all the photos you’re yet to take.

William Yang: Milestone is playing at Sydney Festival on January 10th and 11th.