A photographer for more than 40 years, for the past 25 years William Yang has been linking his images with narrative to create a performance art that sits somewhere between ocumentary and storytelling.
William has created 11 full-length works that have played in more than 25 countries and isbringing The Story Only I Can Tell to the Tauranga Arts Festival on Tuesday, October 24.
It details his life and the lives of his forebears - his grandparents migrated to Australia in the 1880s and young William grew up on a North Queensland tobacco farm, brought up, he says, as a "banana - yellow on the outside but white on the inside".
Renowned internationally for his work exploring social diversity, travel and belonging, William, now 74, trained as an architect before moving to Sydney in 1969 where he worked as a freelance photographer documenting the city's social life, including the celebrity set and the gay community.
His first solo exhibition, Sydneyphiles, in 1977 caused a sensation because of its frank depiction of the Sydney gay and party scene, while his 1998 retrospective exhibition Diaries at the State Library of New South Wales was one of their most heavily attended shows.
William's work was the subject of a 2016 book with the authors noting that his theatre presentations give his photographs another life, allowing the work to endure and to evolve.
DETAILS William Yang, The Story Only I Can Tell / Baycourt's X Space / Tuesday October 24 / www.ticketek.co.nz
