My Generation by William Yang. Spoken word and image projection, with music by Daniel Holdsworth. National Portrait Gallery, December 4,5, 9, 10 12 at 6pm; December 11 at 4pm; Saturday December 6 at 12.30pm; Sunday December 7 and Saturday December 13 at 12.30pm and 6pm. Tickets: $15 / $8 Friends and Concessions. Bookings: 6102 7070.
"My photographs are like the children I never had. They will tell my stories when I am gone."
William Yang's career as a freelance photographer of the Sydney arts and gay scene began in the early 1970s. By the late 1980s he had established his particular style of photography to the extent that he no longer had to rely on finding work at the beck and call of magazine and newspaper editors. He became free to continue and develop his visual record of the lives of people like Kate Fitzpatrick, Robyn Nevin, Rex Cramphorn, Jim Sharman, Brett Whiteley, Martin Sharp, Patrick White, the fashion duo Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, and many more.
Yang's performance is far more than an entertaining slide show of wild parties taken to excess. Though he was there, "with a glass of champagne in one hand and a camera in the other", a participant who came out of isolation as a gay man in Brisbane into the social explosion which became the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, amongst an extraordinary set of actors, theatre directors, painters, sculptors and fashion designers, he shows us how "my camera protected me". His skill is not only in creating photographs which bring all those people's lives into our consciousness, but in being a quiet observer whom people could trust. His photographs tell their stories, with humour and sensitivity, when many of them have gone.
I had already found myself at the new National Portrait Gallery talking to a very different performer and portrait artist, Rolf Harris, about how he feels when performing on stage. Do we see the real Rolf Harris or a character he creates? This led to his appearance on Andrew Denton's Enough Rope, where he said he felt embarrassed when emotion overcame him, while we viewers felt we had seen the real person. In painting a portrait, Harris tries to create an image of the real person behind the picture. I realised, watching Yang, that he does the same. His photographs capture the images of people. His words, and Holdsworth's live music, tell us the stories behind the pictures, bringing out the emotions and building over 90 minutes our understanding not only of the people in his photos but of William Yang himself.
We see a man proud of his children, unsure when they were young of how they might turn out, elated when they grew to maturity, and satisfied looking over them now after some 35 years, confident that they will indeed tell his stories with truth and feeling. Yang has created a work of art, using the photographs as elements in an unfolding story. Because it is true to life and deals explicitly with the human body, drug taking and death, alongside beauty, enjoyment and achievement, My Generation is not a show for children.
But for the National Portrait Gallery, My Generation is an artistic triumph to start the career of the new building, full of light, with stories to tell through portraits of all kinds of Australians, from Rolf Harris to William Yang, from Captain Cook to Eddie Mabo. Take the children through the exhibitions with a free iPod video guide (they'll show you how to use it), but also take the opportunity to experience My Generation.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
