The China Project

259 WILLIAM YANG: LIFE LINES I’d like to ask about your first encounter with photography, and what drew you to photographing people in particular. My first serious encounter with photography occurred when I was 21, as an undergraduate at the University of Queensland. I took a trip to Japan and bought a Pentax single-lens reflex camera, and a variety of lenses. I favoured the telephoto lens, and just started shooting architecture, ‘touristic’ shots. I then gradually started to take people because I found them more interesting. I was influenced by magazines, and started off with a ‘fashiony’ kind of look. You once described your approach to portraiture as being very simple, focusing on a frontal pose that ‘allows a reading of the map of the human face’ 1 and avoids a performance of self. This is interesting given your work with theatre and, as you just mentioned, with fashion-style photography. What drew you away from a performative or constructed mode of photography and into a documentary mode? I preferred full-frontal because it showed more. When I started to do dissolve pieces it was easier to dissolve one full-frontal face into another. 2 So I’ve always kept that format as my standard portrait but now there is more variation in my work and I can deviate from that if the mood takes me. Generally, I think there are two different ways photographers can go. One is to set up a studio and bring people in. This has the big advantage in that one has a controlled light situation and you can get consistency. I think it’s a bit like making a film in a studio. The other way is to go out into the world and find your images there. That’s the documentary way. It has the advantage that there are fewer overheads; you don’t have to maintain a studio. It’s riskier because you often find yourself in situations that you can’t control. Anyway, it’s the way I’ve favoured. Even as a playwright I thought that real life threw up better situations than I could think up myself. So you always had your portraits in mind as part of a series or sequence? No, I think that evolved. A good portrait can hold its own. It need only be a face simply presented. I can look at a good portrait for a long time. But when I’m telling a story there are different aspects of the person or situation that come into play. The most important of these is the setting or the environment. Character and place are the main elements of storytelling. There was a period back in the ’80s when I took a lot of close-ups and when I look at those pictures now, I wish I’d have stood back a little and photographed the room as well. What were your influences when you were starting out, or that have carried you through as a portrait photographer? I’ve had one favourite photographer, and it’s never changed, and that is Diane Arbus. She gave a psychological penetration into portraiture that really sets her apart from any other photographer that I’ve seen, because she’s right in there. And when you read her texts, she is very evolved philosophically about her photography as well. About every six years I re-read this monograph of hers, especially the text from a talk she gave at her classes. Diane Arbus was really the first photographer that I saw who landed a body-blow. Most of my input in terms of ideas as a non- conscious artist in Brisbane in the ’60s came from magazines, and I made imitations of what I saw. When I saw Diane Arbus’s work in the ’70s I realised that photography could be a powerful expression of the human condition. I recognised that instantly as being better than all those impressive photographs that I’d seen in magazines. Do you prefer to photograph people who you know, or strangers? Sometimes it’s easier if I feel comfortable with the person. But I quite like photographing famous people whom I don’t know well, because there’s a commercial aspect to famous people. It’s easier to sell a portrait of a famous person! I suppose it’s whatever aspect of the person turns me on: if they’re famous, or if they are a friend or family who I’ve had a long relationship with, or if it’s someone from my collection — I’ve got people who I’ve photographed over a long period of time — or if it’s a good-looking person. All of those things can turn me on. For ‘Life Lines’ you have brought together your self-portraits for the first time. Given that so much of your work has been autobiographical, why has it taken until now to show these photographs as a group? I’ve been thinking about it for years actually, but never got around to it, and I suppose this is the first opportunity I’ve had. Even so, this isn’t really the full collection of self-portraits, because these deal mainly with my Chinese identity. There are others that I haven’t included, but it’s most of them. When I started to do performance pieces, I started to think about my own story when I was telling other people’s stories, and in the recent ones I tell more stories about myself. In my opposite Mother. Graceville. 1989 (from ‘About my mother’ portfolio) 2003 Gelatin silver photograph, ed. 2/10 / 51.3 x 61.1cm / Purchased 2004. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery above Mel Gibson 1982 Gelatin silver photograph / 40 x 27cm / Collection: The artist