January 2022
A. Archibald McDonald (Australian born Canada, c. 1831-1873)
Untitled (Portrait of a man) (recto)
c. 1864-1875
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
My friend Terence lent me his family photo album. It contains a lot of wonderful cartes-de-visite from photography salons in central Melbourne and country Victoria all in remarkably good condition. There are some unusual cards: family groups, twins in identical chequered outfits, a Latino woman, casual portraits with the sitter relaxing with their knees crossed and even an outdoor photograph of a dirty young vagabond with a chair. There is also a rare card, not strictly a cartes-de-visite, that lists when Omnibuses leave Hoddle Street (late Punt Road) and Toorak Road for St. Kilda via Chapel, Wellington, and Fitzroy Streets.
Several cartes-de-visite seem to have been taken at the same session but with different props: witness the Benson & Stevenson cards Untitled (Standing boy), Untitled (Seated woman) and Untitled (Seated woman holding book) where the background remains basically the same but the tablecloth has been inverted – probably son, mother and grandmother. Another Benson & Stevenson pairing Untitled (Seated wife and husband) and Untitled (Family group) possibly show the grandparents and their extended family.
Two cards by the Paterson Brothers, Untitled (Standing man holding a hat) and Untitled (Standing man) show the same backdrop but with a different width, height and design of column attached to the end of the colonnaded fence… perhaps to accommodate for the different height of the subjects. Were these two photographs taken in the same photographic session? Did the men know each other, were they brothers, or business partners?
A most beautiful card is that by an unknown photographer of Mr and Mrs Ritchie (1868, below). Against a plain backdrop and standing on a patterned piece of linoleum, the couple stand frontally facing the camera, her body slightly titled to the right while his lanky frame in oversized coat and lanky trousers is positioned to the left of the frame. The most striking thing about the photograph is Mrs Ritchie’s voluminous striped dress which takes up two-thirds of the pictorial frame, encroaching on Mr Ritchie’s space and obscuring his left foot. Her petite hand is nestled in the crook of his arm while his hands seem massive in comparison. He stares resolutely at the camera while she stares wistfully off camera to her right, mimicking the positioning of her body. This, as the back of the card observes, is the “likeness” of Mrs Alex Ritchie and a memory of her. Alex. Alex. Alex. What was your life like? What happiness and sadness did you endure that we remember you now, revisiting your likeness, bringing you into our consciousness, our hearts and thus into our memory – loved as you were by God & highly esteemed by all that knew her.
The more I reflect on these early photographs, the more I consider the moment that these people had their photographs taken – in those days, those several seconds that they had to remain still for the exposure – and the performance that led up to the capturing of their image. The appointment (if they had one), the entry into the gallery, the greeting, the seating, the waiting for the room to be available, the preparation of the attire, the combing of the hair, the direction by the photographer, the posing of the figure(s) and the exposure of the plate.
Some people would have been annoyed at the process, irritated at how long it took and how long they had to keep still for. I suspect others were imbued of the magic and the theatre of the photographic gallery… and that those few seconds of stillness could become like a period of extended time, like a car crash, where time slows down.** A brief abeyance of the laws of physics becomes an extension of the time of the spirit. The “presence” of the man in A. Archibald McDonald’s cartes-de-visite (c. 1864-1875, above) is a case in point: the low depth of field; the casual placement of hands on thigh and back of chair; the high-buttoned coat, chequered shirt, and top pocket handkerchief; the magnificent beard and the coiffed hair; but above all that penetrating gaze, as though he is staring off into the space of immortality.
Everything in balance, in focus, in stillness.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
** What I am encouraging you to think about here is that the time freeze of the photograph, the snap of the shutter, can be defeated in the physicality of the image, and in the space of the exposure – by a distortion of the witness’s felt temporality.
I am using Paul Virilio’s observation:
“‘No’, Rodin replies. ‘It is art that tells the truth and photography that lies. For in reality time does not stand still, and the artist who manages to give the impression that a gesture is being executed over several seconds, their work is certainly much less conventional than the scientific image in which time is abruptly suspended …’ The sharing of duration (between art and witness) is automatically defeated by the innovation of photographic instantaneity, for if the instantaneous image pretends to scientific accuracy in its details, the snap-shot’s image freeze or rather image-time-freeze invariably distorts the witness’s felt temporality …”
Paul Virilio. The Vision Machine (trans. Julie Rose). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 2.
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Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
A. Archibald McDonald (Australian born Canada, c. 1831-1873)
Untitled (Portrait of a man) (verso)
c. 1864-1875
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Archibald McDonald (Australian born Canada, c. 1831-1873)
Archibald McDonald was a professional photographer, son of Hugh McDonald and Grace née McDougal, was born in Nova Scotia where his father was a planter. He came to Melbourne in about 1847 and was in partnership with Townsend Duryea by 1852. Their daguerreotype portraits and views in the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition were awarded a medal (which McDonald was still citing in advertisements in 1866). At the end of 1854 Duryea and McDonald were in Tasmania announcing that they would open a daguerreotype studio on 11 December at 46 Liverpool Street, Hobart Town. Still enough of a novelty to require promotion and explanation, their daguerreotypes were labelled ‘Curiosities as works of art – puzzles to the uninitiated – studies for the contemplative – pleasing reflections – historical records – pocket editions of the works of nature which “he who runs may read”‘. The partners had gone their separate ways by the following July when ‘Macdonald & Co., late Duryea & Macdonald’ began to advertise from Brisbane Street, Launceston. Archibald visited Launceston in July and again in November, in the interim making short tours to Deloraine (August), Longford (September) and Campbell Town (October).
Afterwards he continued the Melbourne firm of Duryea & McDonald possibly with Sanford Duryea , Townsend having relocated to Adelaide. By 1855 Thomas Adams Hill was the other half of the partnership at 3 Bourke Street, East Melbourne, but Hill soon left the studio to set up on his own. The young Charles Nettleton had joined the firm in 1854 and, according to Cato, then took over the outdoor work while McDonald concentrated on studio portraiture. The business flourished and by 1858 Duryea & McDonald had two Melbourne studios. McDonald set up a studio in his sole name in 1860 at 25 Bourke Street. In 1861 a case of his daguerreotype portraits in the Victorian Exhibition was awarded a first-class certificate and his photograph of the Albion Hotel received an honourable mention in the supplementary awards. Both his untouched and ‘Mezzotinto’ portrait photographs gained honourable mentions at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition.
Having moved to St George’s Hall at 71 Bourke Street by 1864 McDonald was advertising extensive additions, including a new gallery, in 1866. His studio, he predictably claimed, was now ‘second to none in Europe or America and far surpassing anything in the Colonies’. The fire of March 1872 that destroyed the Theatre Royal, located directly behind his studio, also damaged his premises, but they were soon repaired and McDonald was at this address when he died the following year. His death was reported in the Illustrated Australian News on 4 December 1873…
Staff Writer. “Archibald McDonald,” on the Design & Art Australia Online website Jan 1, 1992 updated Oct 19, 2011 [Online] Cited 04/11/2021.
B. Archibald McDonald (Australian born Canada, c. 1831-1873)
Untitled (Portrait of a man) (recto)
c. 1864-1875
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
B. Archibald McDonald (Australian born Canada, c. 1831-1873)
Untitled (Portrait of a man) (verso)
c. 1864-1875
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Alfred Bock (Australian, 1835-1920)
Untitled (Portrait of a child) (recto)
c. 1867-1882
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
This could be the sister of the twin boys below. Notice the same backdrop and the same table and cover to the right. In this image a chair has been used as a prop while in the image of the twins it has been removed.
Alfred Bock (Australian, 1835-1920)
Untitled (Portrait of a child) (verso)
c. 1867-1882
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Alfred Bock (Australian, 1835-1920)
One of the pioneers of early photography in the 19th century along with his stepfather Thomas Bock, Alfred Bock also pursued a number of other interests including botany, painting and engraving. Mostly a resident of Tasmania, Bock also spent time in Victoria and New Zealand. …
With Thomas, Alfred had practiced photography commercially from its beginning in the daguerreotype form and he was concerned in every stage of development of the technique in Australia, undertaking innovative work in connection with the wet-plate process. Davies states that Bock introduced the carte-de-visite to Hobart Town in 1861, its first appearance anywhere in Tasmania. In 1864 he himself claimed to be the only person in the colony using the genuine sennotype process, a technique that gave a rich three-dimensional effect to portraits by overlaying a waxed albumen print on a normal photograph. The claim led to a lengthy controversy with Henry Frith, aired in the press from April to July. In the Mercury of 3 September 1864 Bock advertised that he had ‘succeeded, after a great number of experiments, in producing ALBUM PORTRAITS, by a modification of the SENNOTYPE PROCESS, retaining all the relief, delicacy, and lifelike beauty of the larger pictures’. He became most expert at the process and introduced a variation for cartes-de-visite in 1864. He continued to advertise sennotypes and ‘every description of Photograph from Locket to Life-size, executed in the most perfect manner’ until he left Hobart Town. His repertoire also included oil portraits painted over solar-enlarged photographs. His painted photographs of J. Boyd , civil commandant at Port Arthur, and ‘the late Captain Spring’ were commended in the Mercury of 14 July 1866. …
In 1867 Bock moved to Victoria and settled at Sale where he again conducted a photography business, producing not only the popular cartes-de-visite from his studio in Foster Street but also enlarging hand-coloured photographic portraits of Gippsland notables. At the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition, Sale Borough Council was exhibiting two Alfred Bock watercolours, Redbank, River Avon, North Gippsland and On the Albert River, South Gippsland , possibly painted earlier. Bock himself showed his work at various exhibitions – the London International Exhibition (1873), the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition (1876), the Sandhurst (Bendigo) Industrial Exhibition (1879), the Adelaide International Exhibition (1887) and the Paris International Exhibition (1889) – and gained several awards.
In 1882 Bock advertised the sale ‘of the whole of his portrait and landscape negatives as well as those by the late Mr Jones and others, to Mr F. Cornell of Foster Street, Sale’ and went to Auckland, New Zealand. The family was back in Melbourne by 1887 where they remained until about 1906. Then Alfred retired from business and settled near Wynyard, Tasmania. He died there on 19 February 1920, survived by his second wife and a number of his children.
Plomley, N. J. B. and Kerr, Joan. “Alfred Bock,” on the Design & Art Australia Online website 1992 updated 2012 [Online] Cited 04/11/2021.
Alfred Bock (Australian, 1835-1920)
Untitled (Portrait of twins) (recto)
c. 1867-1882
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Alfred Bock (Australian, 1835-1920)
Untitled (Portrait of twins) (verso)
c. 1867-1882
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Alfred Bock (Australian, 1835-1920)
Untitled (Portrait of a man) (recto)
c. 1867-1882
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Alfred Bock (Australian, 1835-1920)
Untitled (Portrait of a man) (verso)
c. 1867-1882
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Untitled (Standing man)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Not dated, but photographers’ flourish dates for Elizabeth St. address: 1872-1880
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Untitled (Standing boy)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Notice the same floral basket on the table as in the photograph of the seated woman below: same background, inverted covering to the table, perhaps mother and son.
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Untitled (Seated woman)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print with hand colouring
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Untitled (Seated woman holding book)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print with hand colouring
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Again, the same background, table covering and floral basket as the seated woman in the photograph above: this could be the grandmother.
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Untitled (Standing woman)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print with hand colouring
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Notice the same painted background with the column as the image of the seated woman above, but with different props: one a covered table, the other a colonnade
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Untitled (Standing woman)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Mrs E. Thornton (recto)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print with hand colouring
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Mrs E. Thornton (verso)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print with hand colouring
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Untitled (Seated man)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Untitled (Seated wife and husband)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
This could be the grandparents of the family in the cartes-de-visite below.
Benson & Stevenson (Australian)
Untitled (Family group)
c. 1872-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
John Botterill (Australian born England, 1817-1881)
Untitled (Standing man) (recto)
1872-1874
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
John Botterill (Australian born England, 1817-1881)
Untitled (Standing man) (verso)
1872-1874
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
John Botterill (Australian born England, 1817-1881)
John Botterill, miniaturist, portrait painter and professional photographer, was born in Britain, son of John Botterill and Mary, née Barker. John junior was working in Melbourne from the early 1850s, advertising in the Argus of 12 April 1853 as a portrait, miniature and animal painter and offering lessons in landscape, fruit and flower painting in oil, watercolour, ‘crayon’ or pencil. …
Botterill appeared in Melbourne directories from 1862 to 1866 as an artist of Caroline Street, South Yarra. Between 1861 and 1865 he was also working at P.M. Batchelder ‘s Photographic Portrait Rooms in Collins Street East, Melbourne, ‘engaged … to paint miniatures and portraits in oil, watercolour or mezzotint – these deserve what they are receiving, a wide reputation’, stated the Argus on 22 November 1865. In 1866 he became one of the proprietors of Batchelder’s with F.A. Dunn and J.N. Wilson, but the partnership lasted only until the end of the following year. For the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Melbourne in November 1867 Botterill painted a 4 × 5 foot (121 × 152cm) transparency to decorate Batchelder’s. The Argus described this in detail, noting that it represented four of England’s chief naval heroes (Drake, Blake, Nelson and Collingwood) as well as Prince Alfred, an Elizabethan galleon and the Galatea , with the motto ‘England’s naval heroes and her hope’. Two coloured photographs by Botterill, Portrait of Sir J.H.T. Manners-Sutton and Portrait of Lady Manners-Sutton, were lent by the Governor Manners-Sutton to both the Melbourne Public Library and Ballarat Mechanics Institute exhibitions in 1869. From 1870 to 1879 Botterill operated his own Melbourne photographic studio: at 19 Collins Street East in 1872-74 and at 12 Beehive Chambers, Elizabeth Street in 1875-79. He died on 25 July 1881 and was buried in the St Kilda Cemetery.
Staff Writer. “John Botterill,” on the Design & Art Australia Online website Jan 1, 1992 updated October 19, 2011 [Online] Cited 04/11/2021.
Arthur William Burman (Australian, 1851-1915) (active 1869-1889, photographer)
Untitled (shirtless man with arms folded) (recto)
1878-1888
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Arthur William Burman (Australian, 1851-1915) (active 1869-1889, photographer)
Untitled (shirtless man with arms folded) (verso)
1878-1888
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Undated but photographer’s flourish dates for this address: 1878-1888
Arthur William Burman was one of the nine children of photographer William Insull Burman (1814-1890), who came to Victoria in 1853. Burman senior worked as a painter and decorator before establishing his own photography business in Carlton around 1863. Arthur and his older brother, Frederick, worked in the family business which, by 1869, operated a number of studios around Melbourne. Arthur is listed as operating businesses under his own name from addresses in East Melbourne, Carlton, Windsor, Fitzroy and Richmond between 1878 and his death in 1890.
F. C. Burman & Co (Australian)
Untitled (Standing woman) (recto)
Nd
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
F. C. Burman & Co (Australian)
Untitled (Standing woman) (verso)
Nd
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Frederick K. Cornell (Australian born England, c. 1833-1890) (active 1865-1890)
Untitled (Standing man) (recto)
c. 1873 – c. 1890 at Foster Street, Sale, Gippsland, Vic.
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Frederick K. Cornell (Australian born England, c. 1833-1890) (active 1865-1890)
Untitled (Standing man) (verso)
c. 1873 – c. 1890 at Foster Street, Sale, Gippsland, Vic.
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Frederick Cornell arrived in Melbourne in 1854 from England aged 21. He was joined in Melbourne by his brothers, and they ran a number of shops there. By 1865 Cornell was taking and exhibiting photographs, and in 1867 relocated to Sale. He was then variously at Bairnsdale and Beechworth until he finally settled at Sale in 1875. He travelled throughout Gippsland at various times, and set up temporary studios. Frederick Cornell died at Sale in June 1890.
Frederick K. Cornell (Australian born England, c. 1833-1890) (active 1865-1890)
Untitled (Standing woman) (recto)
c. 1873 – c. 1890 Foster Street, Sale, Gippsland, Vic.
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Frederick K. Cornell (Australian born England, c. 1833-1890) (active 1865-1890)
Untitled (Standing woman) (verso)
c. 1873 – c. 1890 Foster Street, Sale, Gippsland, Vic.
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Frederick K. Cornell (Australian born England, c. 1833-1890) (active 1865-1890)
Untitled (Portrait of a man) (recto)
Nd
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Frederick K. Cornell (Australian born England, c. 1833-1890) (active 1865-1890)
Untitled (Portrait of a man) (verso)
Nd
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
William Davies & Co (Australian born England) (active Australia, 1855-1882)
Untitled (Standing man) (recto)
c. 1862 – 1870
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
William Davies & Co (Australian born England) (active Australia, 1855-1882)
Untitled (Standing man) (verso)
c. 1862 – 1870
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
William Davies (Australian born England)
English photographer William Davies had arrived in Melbourne by 1855. He is said to have worked with his friend Walter Woodbury and for the local outpost of the New York firm Meade Brothers before establishing his own business in 1858. By the middle of 1862, ‘Davies & Co’ had rooms at 91 and 94 Bourke Street, from where patrons could procure ‘CARTE de VISITE and ALBUM PORTRAITS, in superior style’. Like several of his contemporaries and competitors, Davies appears to have made the most of his location ‘opposite the Theatre Royal’, subjects of Davies & Co cartes de visite including leading actors such as Barry Sullivan and Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, and comedian Harry Rickards. Examples of the firm’s work – portraits and views – were included in the 1861 Victorian Exhibition and the London International Exhibition of 1862; and at the 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition the firm exhibited ‘Portraits, Plain and Coloured, in Oils and Water Colours’ alongside a selection of views for which they received an honourable mention.
Sandie Barrie’s book Australians under the Camera refers the user to an entry for Davies, William & Co. who operated as a photographer between 1855 and 1882 and then in April 1893 as a travelling photographer.
William Davies was a professional photographer who established a number of studios in Melbourne between the 1858 and 1882. Davies was probably born in Manchester, UK and arrived in Melbourne around 1855. He began his photographic career in Australia in the employ of his friend, Walter Woodbury (inventor of the Woodburytype) and the Meade Brothers. Davies purchased the Meades’ business in 1858 and opened his own studio, William Davies and Co at 98 Bourke St, specialising in albumen photography of individuals and local premises. This address was opposite the Theatre Royal, and Davies took advantage of the proximity by selling cartes de visite of famous actors, actresses and opera singers. In 1861, Davies’s firm showed a number of portraits and images of Melbourne and Fitzroy buildings, often with the proprietors standing outside, at the Victorian Exhibition, and then at the 1862 London International Exhibition, where they received honourable mention. Along with actresses and buildings, the company also specialised in carte de visite portraits of Protestant clergymen posed in the act of writing their sermons. From 1862 to 1870 the firm was located at 94A Bourke St, where they shared the premises with the photographers Cox and Luckin.
Text from the Art Gallery of New South Wales website [Online] Cited 05/11/2021
St. George’s Hall Photographic Co.,
William Davies & Co (Australian born England) (active Australia, 1855-1882)
Untitled (Standing woman) (recto)
c. 1862 – 1870
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
St. George’s Hall Photographic Co.,
William Davies & Co (Australian born England) (active Australia, 1855-1882)
Untitled (Standing woman) (verso)
c. 1862 – 1870
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Ezra Goulter (Australian born England, 1825-1899)
Untitled (Standing woman) (recto)
c. 1876 – c. 1893
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Ezra Goulter (1825-1899) was born in England and arrived in Australia with his new wife Sarah in 1860. He had previously visited Australia in 1849. Goulter was a professional photographer who worked in various studios around Melbourne. From 1863-1871 he worked in Emerald Hill (now South Melbourne), then he had a brief period at 57 Collins Street East from 1866-1867, and from 1876-1893 he was based on Chapel Street in Prahran. He focused on portraiture and produced cartes-de-visite in both black-and-white and hand-coloured formats. He exhibited his portraits at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition where he received an honourable mention.
Text from the Monash Gallery of Art website
Ezra Goulter (Australian born England, 1825-1899)
Untitled (Standing woman) (verso)
c. 1876 – c. 1893
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Charles Hewitt (Australian, 1837-1912) (active c. 1860 – c. 1899)
Untitled (Vignette of a man) (recto)
c. 1866-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Charles Hewitt (Australian, 1837-1912) (active c. 1860 – c. 1899)
Untitled (Vignette of a man) (verso)
c. 1866-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Charles Hewitt was a professional photographer, was a foundation member of the Council of the Photographic Society of Victoria formed at Melbourne in 1860. Ran his own studios in various Melbourne locations until 1899 when he moved to Stawell, Victoria.
Not dated but a Hewitt worked at 95 Swanston Street, Melbourne between 1866-1880. Ref.: Australians behind the camera, directory of early Australian photographers, 1841-1945 / Sandy Barrie, 2002
Charles Hewitt (Australian, 1837-1912) (active c. 1860 – c. 1899)
Untitled (Oval of a man) (recto)
c. 1866-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Charles Hewitt (Australian, 1837-1912) (active c. 1860 – c. 1899)
Untitled (Oval of a man) (verso)
c. 1866-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Charles Hewitt (Australian, 1837-1912) (active c. 1860 – c. 1899)
Untitled (Oval of a woman) (recto)
c. 1866-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Charles Hewitt (Australian, 1837-1912) (active c. 1860 – c. 1899)
Untitled (Oval of a woman) (verso)
c. 1866-1880
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
E. E. Hibling (photographer active c. 1873 – c. 1877)
Johnstone O’Shannessy & Co (active 1865-1905)
Untitled (family group) (recto)
c. 1873 – c. 1877
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
E. E. Hibling (photographer active c. 1873 – c. 1877)
Johnstone O’Shannessy & Co (active 1865-1905)
Untitled (family group) (verso)
c. 1873 – c. 1877
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Not dated but a Hibling worked at 7 Collins Street East, Melbourne between between 1873-1877. Ref.: Australians behind the camera, directory of early Australian photographers, 1841-1945 / Sandy Barrie, 2002.
Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co was founded in Melbourne in 1864 by Henry James Johnstone and a photographer known as ‘Miss O’Shaughnessy’, who had previously been in partnership with her mother in their own photographic business in Carlton. The firm exhibited photographs at the Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne in 1866, where the ‘special excellence’ of their work was noted by the judges. By the mid-1880s, when the firm moved from their Bourke Street address to purpose-built premises in the section of Collins Street known as ‘the Block’, Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co. were arguably Melbourne’s leading portrait photographers, their services sought by governors, visiting royalty, politicians and other prominent members of society. Examples of Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co.’s portraits were included in the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1875 and the 1888 Melbourne International Exhibition. They expanded to Sydney during the 1880s, but the firm’s fortunes declined during the economic downturn of the following decade.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website updated 2018 [Online] Cited 08/11/2021
Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co was a leading photographic studio located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It was active from 1865 to 1905.
Henry James Johnstone was born in Birmingham, England, in 1835 and studied art under a number of private teachers and at the Birmingham School of Design before joining his father’s photographic firm. He arrived in Melbourne in 1853 aged 18 and became Melbourne’s leading portrait photographer during the 1870s and 1880s. In 1862 he bought out the Duryea and MacDonald Studio and started work as Johnstone and Co. In 1865 the firm became Johnstone, O’Shannessy and Co. with partner Emily O’Shannessy and co-owner George Hasler.
Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co. were Melbourne’s leading portrait photographers whose services were sought by governors, visiting royalty, politicians and other prominent members of society. Johnstone impressed the Duke of Edinburgh during his visit to Victoria and was appointed to his staff as Royal Photographer. Examples of Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co.’s photographic portraits were included in the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1875 and the 1888 Melbourne International Exhibition where the excellence of their work was noted by the judges.
In 1876 Johnstone left Melbourne for South Australia and then travelled extensively in America, and then in 1880 to London, where he regularly exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy until 1900. He died in London in 1907 aged 72. The firm continued without him and expanded to Sydney during the 1880s and occupied a variety of buildings in Melbourne until the 1890s, but the firm’s fortunes declined during the economic downturn of the following decade. George Hasler, who created a printing process called Neogravure, ran the company till his death in 1897, after which his son-in-law, Rupert De Clare Wilks, took over the company from 1897 until 1905 when he put it into liquidation.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co (active 1865-1905)
Untitled (Standing woman) (recto)
1865-1886
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Not dated but Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co. worked from 3 Bourke St. East, Melbourne, 1865-1886. Ref.: Australians behind the camera, directory of early Australian photographers, 1841-1945 / Sandy Barrie, 2002.
Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co (active 1865-1905)
Untitled (Standing woman) (verso)
1865-1886
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Charles Nettleton (Australian born England, 1826-1902)
Untitled (Seated man) (recto)
c. 1867 – late 1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
This could be the same man as in the photograph by A. Archibald McDonald (Australian born Canada, c. 1831-1873) Untitled (Portrait of a man) at the top of the posting. Very similar hair, beard, eyes, countenance and gaze.
Charles Nettleton (Australian born England, 1826-1902)
Untitled (Seated man) (verso)
c. 1867 – late 1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
When this portrait was taken, Nettleton’s business address was No. 1, Madeline St. North Melbourne where he remained from 1863 until the late 1880s, although he had three other studios in Melbourne, including an office in the Victoria Arcade, Bourke St (Kerr 1992: 568). This photograph has to be after 1867
Charles Nettleton (Australian born England, 1826-1902)
Charles Nettleton (1826-1902), photographer, was born in north England, son of George Nettleton. He arrived in Victoria in 1854 accompanied by his wife Emma, née Miles. In Melbourne he joined the studio of T. Duryea and Alexander McDonald and specialised in outdoor work. He carried his dark tent and equipment with him everywhere, a necessity in the days of the collodion process when plates had to be developed immediately after exposure. He became special photographer for the government and the Melbourne Corporation and is credited with having photographed the first Australian steam train when the private Melbourne-Sandridge (Port Melbourne) line was opened on 12 September 1854.
Nettleton systematically recorded Melbourne’s growth from a small town to a metropolis. Every major public work was photographed including the water and sewerage system, bridges and viaducts, roads, wharves, diversion of the River Yarra and construction of the Botanical Gardens. His public buildings include the Town Hall, Houses of Parliament, Treasury, Royal Mint, Law Courts and Post Office and he also photographed theatres, churches, schools, banks, hospitals and markets. His collection of ships includes photographs of the Cutty Sark, and the Shenandoah. He photographed the troops sent to the Maori war in 1860, the artillery camp at Sunbury in 1866 as well as contingents for the Sudan campaign and the Boxer rising. The sharp delineation of his pictures taken at six seconds exposure was a credit to his skill.
Nettleton visited the goldfields and country towns, photographed forests and fern glades, and rushed to disaster areas. In 1861 he boarded the Great Britain to take pictures of the first English cricket team to come to Australia. During the Victorian visit of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867 he was appointed official photographer. He was police photographer for over twenty-five years and his portrait of Ned Kelly, of which one print is still extant, is claimed to be the only genuine photograph of the outlaw. Nettleton had opened his own studio in 1858. His souvenir albums were the first of the type to be offered to the public. However, when the dry-plate came into general use in 1885 he knew that the new process offered opportunities that were beyond his scope. Five years later his studio was closed. His work had won recognition abroad. His first success was at the London Exhibition of 1862 and in 1867 he was honoured in Paris. He was not a great artist but a master technician.
Nettleton was an active member of the Collingwood Lodge of Freemasons and a match-winning player of the West Melbourne Bowling Club. Aged 76 he died on 4 January 1902, survived by his wife, seven daughters and three sons.
Jean Gittins, “Nettleton, Charles (1826-1902),” on the Australian Dictionary of Biography website, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy (Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 5, Melbourne University Press, 1974), accessed online 9 November 2021.
Charles Nettleton (Australian born England, 1826-1902)
Untitled (Standing man) (recto)
c. 1867 – late 1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Charles Nettleton (Australian born England, 1826-1902)
Untitled (Standing man) (verso)
c. 1867 – late 1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (two brothers)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Notice what looks like a photo album of cartes-de-visite on the table at left probably open at a photographic of their mother and father
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Seated woman with clasped hands)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Seated woman)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Standing man)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Young vagabond standing outdoors)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Young vagabond standing outdoors) (detail)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Seated woman)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Standing man holding hat)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Standing man leaning on a pillar)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Mr and Mrs Ritchie) (recto)
1868
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Mr and Mrs Ritchie) (verso)
1868
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
“The likeness of Mrs Alex Ritchie.
In memory of Mrs Ritchie who died on Friday January 10th 1868. She was a child of God, loved by God & highly esteemed by all that knew her.
Her end was peace.
Sykes”
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Standing man with blue sash)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print with hand colouring
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Standing man)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Standing man in boots and spurs)
1860s-1880s
Albumen silver print with hand colouring
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Omnibuses timetable, Melbourne
February 1873 (recto and verso)
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Paterson Brothers (William and Archibald Paterson) (Australian, active c. 1858 – c. 1893)
Untitled (Standing man holding a hat)
c. 1866 – c. 1869 at 8 Bourke Street East, Melbourne, Vic
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
William Paterson was a professional photographer. He worked in Melbourne in partnership with his brother Archibald. At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, both of them were awarded an honourable mention for their ‘Untouched and Coloured Portraits and Photographic Views’.
Paterson Brothers (William and Archibald Paterson) (Australian, active c. 1858 – c. 1893)
Untitled (Standing man holding a hat) (detail)
c. 1866 – c. 1869 at 8 Bourke Street East, Melbourne, Vic
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Paterson Brothers (William and Archibald Paterson) (Australian, active c. 1858 – c. 1893)
Untitled (Standing man)
c. 1866 – c. 1869 at 8 Bourke Street East, Melbourne, Vic
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Paterson Brothers (William and Archibald Paterson) (Australian, active c. 1858 – c. 1893)
Untitled (Standing man) (detail)
c. 1866 – c. 1869 at 8 Bourke Street East, Melbourne, Vic
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Paterson Brothers (William and Archibald Paterson) (Australian, active c. 1858 – c. 1893)
Untitled (Standing boy) (recto)
c. 1866 – c. 1869 at 8 Bourke Street East, Melbourne, Vic
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Paterson Brothers (William and Archibald Paterson) (Australian, active c. 1858 – c. 1893)
Untitled (Standing boy) (verso)
c. 1866 – c. 1869 at 8 Bourke Street East, Melbourne, Vic
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Paterson Brothers (William and Archibald Paterson) (Australian, active c. 1858 – c. 1893)
Untitled (Vignette of a man) (recto)
c. 1866 – c. 1869 at 8 Bourke Street East, Melbourne, Vic
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Paterson Brothers (William and Archibald Paterson) (Australian, active c. 1858 – c. 1893)
Untitled (Vignette of a man) (verso)
c. 1866 – c. 1869 at 8 Bourke Street East, Melbourne, Vic
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
C. Rudd & Co (Australian)
Untitled (Seated man) (recto)
c. 1872
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Undated, flourish dates for photographer at Chapel Street, South Yarra: circa 1872.
C. Rudd & Co (Australian)
Untitled (Seated man) (verso)
c. 1872
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
C. Rudd & Co (Australian)
Untitled (Standing man) (recto)
c. 1872
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
C. Rudd & Co (Australian)
Untitled (Standing man) (verso)
c. 1872
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
C. Rudd & Co (Australian)
Untitled (Standing woman) (recto)
c. 1872
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
C. Rudd & Co (Australian)
Untitled (Standing woman) (verso)
c. 1872
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
William H. Bardwell (Australian, 1836-1929)
Untitled (Seated man)
c. 1880-1888
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
William Bardwell was a professional photographer and regular exhibitor who spent most of his working life in Ballarat, Victoria. Bardwell’s studio operated between 1875-1891. Flourish dates for Bardwell at 21 Collins Street East, Melbourne: 1880-1888.
According to Davies & Stanbury (The Mechanical Eye In Australia: Photography 1841-1900. Oxford University Press, 1985), Bardwell was active at his 21 Collins Street address – his first Melbourne studio – only from 1880, but the Design & Art Australia Online website suggests he had already relocated to Melbourne by the end of 1878.
Solomon & Bardwell (Australian, active c. 1859-1866? 1874?)
Untitled (Mrs John Keys) (recto)
c. 1866
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Saul Solomon (Australian born England, 1836-1929)
Saul Solomon (1836-1929) had a studio in Main Road, Ballarat from 1857 to 1862, and worked in partnership with William Bardwell at 29 Sturt Street, Ballarat until 1874. Solomon and Bardwell also operated in Maryborough and Dunolly. From 1874 to 1891 Solomon operated under the name of the Adelaide School of Photography at 51 Rundle Street, Adelaide.
Saul Solomon was born on 15 January 1836 in Knightbridge, London. He was the son of well known dealer in photographic equipment, Joseph Solomon. He migrated to Victoria in 1852. He was in Ballarat in 1854 and in 1857 he set up a professional photography studio. In 1859 he was joined by William H. Bardwell (active, c.1858 – c.1889). He married Martha Patti at Balalrat on 13 October 1866. Two years later they moved to Adelaide.
William Bardwell (Australian, active c. 1858 – c. 1889)
Bardwell was a professional photographer and regular exhibitor who spent most of his working life in Ballarat, Vic.
He was a professional photographer, was employed in 1858 by Saul Solomon at Ballarat, Victoria providing photographs of the town which were lithographed by Francois Cogne (q.v.) for The Ballarat Album (1859). Solomon and Bardwell were soon partners; they worked in Main Street from 1859, in Sturt Street from 1865 and visited Maryborough and Dunolly (Victoria) in 1865. Together they exhibited photographic portraits at the 1862 Geelong Industrial Exhibition and the 1863 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition. Their ‘new sennotype process’ was judged ‘highly successful’ by the Illustrated Melbourne Post of 27 December 1862. On 9 February 1863, the Argus reported that Bardwell had photographed the ceremony of the laying of the foundation stone of the Burke and Wills memorial in Sturt Street from a vantage point on the roof of the Ballarat Post Office. By 28 September 1866 the partnership seems to have been dissolved for Bardwell was then advertising his Royal Photographic Studio in the Clunes Gazette: ‘The studio is every way replete with suitable accommodation for the preparation of toilet and rooms are provided for both ladies and gentlemen. Mr Bardwell’s long and practical example will entitle him to the claim to the first position in Ballarat as a photographer.’ He exhibited views and portraits, including Portrait of the Very Rev. Dean Hayes, at the 1869 Ballarat Institute Exhibition and showed photographs of Ballarat at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial (for sale at £6). Other exhibited photographs included ‘a large panorama of the city of Ballarat, in a semi-circular form’, …
Text from the Trove website [Online] Cited 12/11/2021
William Bardwell was a professional photographer with a successful business in Ballarat and Melbourne. In Ballarat he formed a partnership with Saul Solomon in 1859 and together they exhibited photographic portraits at the 1862 Geelong Industrial Exhibition and the 1863 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition. It seems Bardwell was fond of using unusual vantage points: in 1863, the ‘Argus’ reported that he had photographed the ceremony of the laying of the foundation stone of the Burke and Wills memorial in Sturt Street from the roof of the Ballarat Post Office. ‘Bardwell established his own studio in 1866, which included rooms for ladies and gentlemen to prepare themselves for the lens’. He showed photographs of Ballarat at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial exhibition (for sale at £6), and ‘a photographic panorama of the city of Ballarat’ as well as other photographs of its buildings and streets in the Victorian section of the London International Exhibition of 1873.
Text from the Art Gallery of New South Wales website [Online] Cited 12/11/2021
Solomon & Bardwell (Australian, active c. 1859-1866? 1874?)
Untitled (Mrs John Keys) (verso)
c. 1866
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
“In memory of Mrs John Keys who died in the year 1866. Her end was peace.”
Stewart & Co (Australian)
Untitled (Oval of a gentleman) (recto)
1881-1889
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Flourish dates for Stewart & Co. at 217-219 Bourke Street East, Melbourne: 1881-1889
“… the upmarket city studio of Stewart & Co. ‘photographers, miniature and portrait painters’, which was located in the theatre district of Bourke Street east. The owner, Englishman Robert Stewart (1838-1912), was a professional photographer who relocated from Sydney to Melbourne in 1871.”
Stewart & Co (Australian)
Untitled (Oval of a gentleman) (verso)
1881-1889
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Joseph Turner (Australian, active 1856-1880s)
Untitled (Standing woman) (recto)
c. 1866
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
Not dated but Turner’s New Portrait Rooms were at Moorabool St., Geelong, Victoria, between 1865-1867. Ref.: Australians behind the camera, directory of early Australian photographers, 1841-1945 / Sandy Barrie, 2002.
The dates for Moorabool St., differ from the entry on Design & Art Australia Online below.
Joseph Turner (Australian)
Joseph Turner was a professional photographer, worked at 24 Great Ryrie Street, Geelong, Victoria, in late 1856. Turner’s New Portrait Rooms were at 60 (later 66) Moorabool Street in 1857-1867, then at Latrobe Terrace until 1869. In June 1856 Turner lectured at the Geelong Mechanics Institute on ‘The Art of Photography’, promoting its superior accuracy to painting. Basing his talk on the quasi-scientific sermons of the Scottish divine Dr Thomas Dick, published as The Practical Astronomer (1855), Turner argued that the minuteness of light particles was a testament to ‘the wisdom and beneficence of the creator’.
The photographs Turner showed at the 1857 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition may have been ambrotypes as his surviving ambrotype of three children (National Gallery of Australia) is thought to date from about 1860. At the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition in 1866 he showed albumen paper prints of architectural and landscape views in Geelong, including ‘large sized photographs of the Chamber of Commerce and the Savings Bank, as well as the United Presbyterian Church, the Mechanics Institute, the Telegraphic and Post offices, the London Chartered Bank, the Town Hall, a well arranged view of Malop Street, and the Private residences of the town’s leading citizens’. Aware of the importance of the photographic portrait to his business, he also exhibited four frames of plain and coloured cartes-de-visite, including portraits of women where ‘the pose and the drapery was wonderfully managed’. Cartes of the mayor, alderman, councillors and officials of Geelong were arranged against a crimson background in one frame. His several enlarged portraits included one of Mr Morrison of the Geelong College. He won a medal for his tinted portraits and another for his architectural and landscape views.
Reviewing the photographic views at the exhibition in the Australian Monthly Magazine, ‘Sol’ commended Turner’s method of printing and presentation. ‘Vignetting portraits has long been a favourable occupation’, he noted, ‘and we have sometimes seen it applied to landscapes, but never in this particular way, and we certainly admire the exquisite finish it gives to the picture’. The Geelong press, on the other hand, admired Turner’s ‘business enterprise’ in using these views and portraits for local publicity when he set up ‘a miniature exhibition’ in his New Portrait Rooms before sending the photographs to the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, particularly as he advertised it at precisely the time that J. Norton and L. Ormerod’s commissioned views were on display in the Geelong Town Hall.
His ability to make the most of an opportunity again surfaced the following year, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Geelong. A pair of plates he took, showing the reception for the royal visitor on the Yarra Street wharf with the mayor welcoming the Duke and the town clerk reading the corporation’s address to his Royal Highness, appeared as engravings in the Illustrated London News soon afterwards.
On 9 October 1869 a large fire in Geelong destroyed five buildings in Moorabool Street, including Turner’s premises, and he disappeared from Geelong. [Gael] Newton notes that Joseph Turner, described as ‘an excellent photographer’, was appointed to the Melbourne Observatory on 10 February 1873 and remained there until 1883. Lunar photographs by Turner are held at the Mount Stromlo and Siding Springs Observatory (Australian Capital Territory) and at the Australian National Gallery. Other photographs are in the La Trobe Library and at Melbourne University.
Paul Fox. “Joseph Turner,” on the Design & Art Australia Online website 1992 updated 2011 [Online] Cited 12/11/2021
Joseph Turner (Australian, active 1856- 1880s)
Untitled (Standing woman) (verso)
c. 1866
Albumen silver print
Cartes-de-visite
11 x 7cm
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Review: ‘William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen’ at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane
Tags: About my mother, Akira Isogawa, Alter Ego, Australia's LGBTIQ+ scene, Australian celebrities, Australian celebrity photography, Australian contemporary photography, Australian cultural and sexual identities, Australian documentary photography, Australian gay liberation, Australian monologues, Australian photographer, Australian photography, Australian society, Australian socio-documentary photography, Australian story of gay liberation, Australian storyteller, beautiful people, Ben Law, Bondi Beach, Boranup Karri Forest #1, Brett Whiteley, Brett Whiteley Lavender Bay, Brett Whiteley Martin Sharp, Cate Blanchett, Cate Blanchett: The star in her dressing room, Celebrity and Portraiture, celebrity photography, celebrity photography in Sydney, Checking Out Bondi, Chinese cultural and sexual identities, Chinese heritage in Australia, Chinese New Year Party Year of the Rabbit, Chinese-Australian heritage, Climbing Huang Shan, cultural and sexual identities, cultural identity, David Gulpilil, Deposition Innisfail Court House 1922, Doris Fish, Earth Below Heaven Above, Family of Yang, Four film directors, Gallery of Modern Art, gay Chinese Australian, Golden Summer, Great Wave off Clovelly, Jac Vidgen, Jac Vidgen and Akira Isogawa, Life Lines, Life Lines #11, Life Lines #3, Lifesaver Double, Lifesavers #3, Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee, Mardi Gras, Marriage Equality, Marriage Equality Mardi Gras, Martin Sharp, monologues, Mother Graceville, Mother Standing, My Generation (Brett Whiteley), Party at the Whiteleys, Patrick White, Patrick White #1, photographs of gay culture in Australia, photographs of Sydney gay party scene, photographs of Sydney Mardi Gras, QAGOMA, Queensland Art Gallery, Rainbow Angel Wings, Return to the place of childhood, Sadness, Seeing and Being Seen, Self portrait #1, Self portrait #2, Self Portrait #5, Self Portrait Listening, social documentary photography, social photographer, social portraiture, socio-documentary photography, Splashproof #1, Sweatbox Party, Sydney celebrity photographer, Sydney gay culture, Sydney Mardi Gras, Sydney's social fabric, Sydneyphiles, Sylvia and the Synthetics, Tamarama Lifesavers, The morning after, The Story of Joe, Waiting for the Parade to Start, William in Cane Fields, William in scholar's costume, William Yang, William Yang About my mother, William Yang Allan, William Yang Alpha, William Yang Alter Ego, William Yang Ben Law, William Yang Bondi Beach, William Yang Boranup Karri Forest #1, William Yang Brett Whiteley Lavender Bay, William Yang Brett Whiteley Martin Sharp, William Yang Cate Blanchett, William Yang Cate Blanchett: The star in her dressing room, William Yang Checking Out Bondi, William Yang Chinese New Year Party Year of the Rabbit, William Yang Climbing Huang Shan, William Yang David Gulpilil, William Yang Deposition Innisfail Court House 1922, William Yang Doris Fish, William Yang Earth Below Heaven Above, William Yang Four film directors, William Yang Golden Summer, William Yang Great Wave off Clovelly, William Yang Jac Vidgen and Akira Isogawa, William Yang Life Lines, William Yang Life Lines #11, William Yang Life Lines #3, William Yang Lifesaver Double, William Yang Lifesavers #3, William Yang Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee, William Yang Marriage Equality Mardi Gras, William Yang Mother Graceville, William Yang Mother Standing, William Yang My Generation (Brett Whiteley), William Yang Party at the Whiteleys, William Yang Patrick White, William Yang Patrick White #1, William Yang performing Sadness, William Yang Rainbow Angel Wings, William Yang Return to the place of childhood, William Yang Sadness, William Yang Self portrait #1, William Yang Self portrait #2, William Yang Self Portrait #5, William Yang Self Portrait Listening, William Yang Splashproof #1, William Yang Sydneyphiles, William Yang Tamarama Lifesavers, William Yang The morning after, William Yang The Story of Joe, William Yang Waiting for the Parade to Start, William Yang William in Cane Fields, William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen
Exhibition dates: 27th March – 22nd August 2021
Curator: Rosie Hays, Associate Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Golden Summer
1987/2016
Inkjet print, gold leaf on Innova Softex paper
40 x 30cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
‘Allan’ from the monologue ‘Sadness’
1992
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
The Family of Yang
Let me tell you a story… a story made up of many smaller tales, told to me by a chronicler, diarist, writer, performance artist and filmmaker; socio-documentary photographer and historian; master of oral history and storytelling – Chinese-Australian artist William Yang.
Voluminous amounts of text have been written about Yang’s art practice and for this reason I only offer here a brief precis of his fifty year career as an artist. Indeed, it is impossible to cover such an expansive career in performance, film, text and photographs in one posting. After the precis I offer some thoughts and insights into Yang’s work.
Yang was born in 1943 into a family of Chinese immigrants in Far North Queensland. After moving to Brisbane in the mid-1960s to study architecture, he journeyed to Sydney in 1969 where he helped produce plays. Yang picked up a camera and started taking photographs of his friends, celebrities, parties and the gay scene in Sydney, Australia in the early-mid 1970s. His first exhibition Sydneyphiles at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Photography in 1977 set him on his way. Personal reflections were written directly on the mounts around his photographs something that he was to adapt further, inscribing his stories directly on the photographs in later bodies of work (“an oral tradition of storytelling transferred to the physical medium of the photograph”). In 1989, Yang began performing monologues with slide projections in theatres, integrating his skills as a writer and a visual artist.
As can be heard in the exhibition curator Rosie Hays’ video talk below, Yang’s first period was as a social life photographer / commercial photographer, earning a living selling his photographs to gay newspapers; his second period encompassed investigations into marginalised communities: queer community, Australian-Chinese community, Indigenous communities and telling alternative histories of Australia including the history of his Chinese-Australian heritage; and in the third period, Yang’s work has become more reflective, interested in ordinary things, interested in the life of the human embodied in the landscape.
.
As a documentary photographer and performance artist, Yang’s work has examined numerous linked themes. The artist investigates the intimate connections between dystopian and utopian worlds – for example, between the body racked by AIDS and the body beautiful (see above), or between the racism of his childhood and the acceptance of his Chinese heritage – as he probes the paradoxes of existence, those parallels streams of life and death, where one person looks death in the eye and the other doesn’t even know it exists… in that moment. And then proposes a reconciliation between past and present, personal and private, between the margins and the centre. Through his personal stories he exposes himself in the act of making his art, transcending his life in art. Ego drops away and he becomes entirely his own person, entirely himself, when he performs in his inimitable, self-deprecating style.
I have a suspicion, and I could be entirely wrong here, that at heart the young Yang was a very shy and insecure person. From personal experience I know that many introverts hide their shyness through extrovert behaviour, wanting to belong, wanting to be in with the in crowd, to be the life of the party. Yang was always there at any event opening or party, never without a camera, always ready to capture what life put before him because he wanted to belong. Then, to his great credit, instead of getting caught in a rut as many artists do repeating the same thing over and over again, he had the intelligence, will and creativity to push himself further, to take those next steps in his development as an artist and human being… to take those steps that descend, in metaphor, to the centre of the earth, to the centre of his existence. He was on that golden path of self discovery, another step in the evolution of himself. He wanted to know how he, and others, fitted into the great scheme of life. As a chronicler of moments, a chronicler of history, he speaks aloud the thoughts of his own becoming.
While photography is about capturing a moment and being a vehicle for storytelling, it is so much more than that. It can be about the relationship between the photographer and the subject and how that relationship evolves from a personal engagement to a universal engagement. It is the artist’s view of the world through the camera lens turned from a personal story into a universal story to which any human being can relate. Here we have empathy and humanity, diversity and racism, voyeurism and performance, public and private, bigotry and poofdom, decadence and death. The artist tells those stories, where personal is universal.
Yang is an national treasure, a living legend. People relate to William Yang. They reveal themselves to him because they feel comfortable in his presence, comfortable in his spirit and energy. He draws people to him, he is a sage – from the Latin sapere ‘be wise’ – who loves documenting people and their interactions with each other and with himself. He draws people into his orbit… and creates magical stories and intimate photographs about human existence. There is an undeniable virtu to the person and his work. All the subjects of his art are his family. Whether a celebration of life, an investigation into community, in joy and in sadness, we are all, always, part of the Family of Yang.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
.
Many thankx to the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Queensland-born, Sydney-based photographer William Yang’s significant contribution to Australian photography spans five decades. Known for his reflective and joyous depictions of Australia’s LGBTIQ+ scene in the late 70s and 80s through to the present. Yang’s photography is informed by the cultural and political pressures of growing up as a gay man from a Chinese immigrant family in north Queensland.
This exhibition is a major survey of Yang’s work, which traces his career from documentary photography through to explorations of cultural and sexual identities and his depictions of landscape. Yang integrates a photographic practice with writing, video and performance. The exhibition includes Yang’s prolific social portraiture which features prominent creative identities from theatre, film, art and literature such as Patrick White, Brett Whiteley and Cate Blanchett, his revelatory insights into the LGBTIQ+ community, and insightful images of the Australian landscape.
Seeing and Being Seen also includes early social photographs of Sydney’s arts scene as well as the artist’s long exploration of his family and childhood experience in North Queensland which interrogate and celebrate his Chinese-Australian identity, Yang’s identity as a Chinese-Australian, a gay man and artist informs his marginalised experience.
While the stories and images included in the exhibition are quite specific to Yang’s life, the emotions underpinning them are instantly recognisable and acutely relatable. There is confession and courage in his storytelling – his most well-known works are often deeply personal and represent the means by which he reckons with his past, his relationships, and his experience outside the mainstream.
Text from the QAGOMA website
Installation view of the exhibition William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) showing at left, Stand Palm Beach (1981); at middle, The Pool at Bondi #3 (1987); and at right, Golden Summer (1987/2016, above)
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Tamarama Lifesavers
1981
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Fine Art Pearl
39 x 70cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen / Exhibition walk-through
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Life Lines #3 – Self portrait #2 (1947)
1947/2008
Photographer: Unknown
Inkjet print on Innova Softex paper, ed. 2/30
100 x 70cm
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010
Photo: Carl Warner Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Alter ego
2001
Digital inkjet print on rag paper
68 x 88cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
Installation view of the exhibition William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) showing the artist standing in front of his photograph Life Lines #11 – William in scholar’s costume (1984) (1984/2009, below)
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Life Lines #11 – William in scholar’s costume (1984)
1984/2009
Inkjet print on Innova Softex paper, ed. 1/20
94.6 x 61.6cm
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010
Photo: Carl Warner Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Self Portrait #5
2008
Inkjet print on Innova Softex paper
42 x 65cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
An exhibition of more than 250 works by Australian photographer and performance artist William Yang opens at the Queensland Art Gallery from tomorrow until 22 August, 2021. William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen spans the artist’s five-decade career and is the first major survey of his work to be presented by an Australian state gallery.
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Director Chris Saines said Seeing and Being Seen referred to the artist’s view of the world through the camera lens. ‘Yang captures people across all walks of life, including celebrity artists, alongside photographic explorations that throw light onto subcultures and marginalised groups, and he does not turn away from unsettling narratives or uncomfortable truths,’ Mr Saines said. ‘We are thrilled to be presenting this major exhibition encompassing every aspect of Yang’s practice and highlighting his life-long fascination with people and storytelling. We are also premiering his major new performance ‘In Search of Home’ at GOMA.’
Minister for the Arts Leeanne Enoch said QAGOMA continued to take a leading role in showcasing Queensland-born artists, such as William Yang.
‘William Yang is a noted writer, performer and visual artist with an international profile and this exhibition is an important survey of his work, celebrating inclusivity and diversity,’ Minister Enoch said. ‘The Queensland Government’s support for QAGOMA helps ensure the Gallery will continue its legacy of celebrating Queensland artists and sharing works that tell our stories.’
The exhibition includes Yang’s prolific social portraiture which features prominent creative identities from theatre, film, art and literature such as Patrick White, Brett Whiteley and Cate Blanchett, his revelatory insights into the LGBTIQ+ community, and insightful images of the Australian landscape. Seeing and Being Seen also includes early social photographs of Sydney’s arts scene as well as the artist’s long exploration of his family and childhood experience in North Queensland which interrogate and celebrate his Chinese-Australian identity.
Rosie Hays, Associate Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA and curator of Seeing and Being Seen said Yang’s identity as a Chinese-Australian, a gay man and artist informs his marginalised experience.
‘While the stories and images included in the exhibition are quite specific to William’s life, the emotions underpinning them are instantly recognisable and acutely relatable,’ Ms Hays said. ‘There is confession and courage in William’s storytelling. His most well-known works are often deeply personal and represent the means by which he reckons with his past, his relationships, and his experience outside the mainstream.’
Born in North Queensland in 1943, Yang grew up with little knowledge of his Chinese heritage. Even though his parents were second-generation Chinese-Australian, Cantonese was not spoken at home. After coming to Brisbane in the mid-1960s to study architecture at the University of Queensland, he moved to Sydney in 1969, and has lived and worked there ever since.
A major hard-cover publication accompanying the exhibition features essays by William Yang, curator Rosie Hays, Professor Susan Best and Benjamin Law.
Press release from the GOMA website
William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen / Illustrated Curator’s Talk
Exhibition curator Rosie Hays (Associate Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA) traces William Yang’s reflective and joyous career, delving deeper into the artworks and themes addressed in Seeing and Being Seen.
Artist William Yang’s slideshow performance with stories and eyewitness images from Sydney’s thrilling and turbulent gay scene from the 1970s until now.
Yang is one of Australia’s greatest storytellers, a prolific photographer and a performer of monologues with slide projections. His stories describe the experience of coming to terms with his identity as a gay Chinese Australian. Yang’s work presents a rich and celebratory visual record of this journey, from Gay Liberation in the seventies, to the emergence of the Mardi Gras and a gay subculture in the eighties, to AIDS in the nineties.
William Yang. Families and Fictions: Contemporary Photography from the Collection: Artist Talk, Queensland Art Gallery, 2005
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
“Mother Standing” Brisbane
1981
Gelatin silver photographs, ed. 2/10
51.3 x 61.1cm
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant purchased 2004
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
© William Yang
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
“Mother Standing” Brisbane (detail)
1981
Gelatin silver photographs, ed. 2/10
51.3 x 61.1cm
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant purchased 2004
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
© William Yang
Installation view of the exhibition William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) showing photographs for Yang’s ‘About my mother’ portfolio
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Mother. Graceville. 1989
1989
From ‘About my mother’ portfolio 2003
Gelatin silver photograph ed. 2/10
51.3 x 61.1cm
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant purchased 2004
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery│Gallery of Modern Art
© William Yang
Installation views of the exhibition William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) showing in the top image, Dawn, Central Australia #3; and in the bottom image at centre top, Doris Fish (1988, below)
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Doris Fish
1988
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
The morning after
1976
Gelatin silver print
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
Morning sun raking through a window gently lights William Yang’s photograph of sleeping bodies and cast-off clothing, portraying ‘the morning after’ with the intimacy of the dawn. Yang photographed Sydney’s social scene of the 1970s and 80s, capturing wild times at discos, nightclubs and parties. Yang also captured the revellers at rest, photographing the supine forms of his naked lovers, night-clubbers passed out on city pavements and benches, and friends sharing makeshift beds on lounge-room floors.
Yang’s first solo exhibition in 1977, Sydneyphiles, was a frank depiction of the Sydney party scene and the emerging gay community. In their unposed realism, his photographs avoid any air of glamour, focusing instead on the unguarded moment and the spontaneous interactions between friends. The scrupulous honesty of his black-and-white documentary style is offset by his poignant and affectionate portrayals of those people and places familiar to him. His photographs are taken from the position of a participant in the worlds they depict, collectively describing the experience of coming to terms with his identity as a gay Chinese Australian. Yang’s visual stories are infused with a gently wry tone, mixing self-deprecating humour with insightful reflections on cultural identity. Here Yang has created images of the aftermath of intimate encounters, apparent in crumpled sheets and the shapes of sleeping bodies.
Text from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney website
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Synthetic Diamonds at Paddington Town Hall
1977
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Alpha
late 1960s
Gelatin silver photograph with fibre-tipped pen on fibre-based paper, ed. 6/10
26.7 x 40.2cm
Collection: The University of Queensland purchased 2001
© William Yang
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Ben Law. Arncliffe
2016/2020
Inkjet print on Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag
30 x 50cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
The Story of Joe
1979/2020
Inkjet print on Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag; single-channel video
Print: 40 x 60cm
Video: 16:9, 3:50 minutes, colour, sound; installed dimensions variable
Writer/Performer: William Yang; Director/Producer: Ben Latham Jones
Co-Director/ Co-Producer: Sophie Georgiou
Camera Operator/Editor: Dean Lever; Auslan
Consultant: Sue Jo Wright
Technical Assistant: Jack Okeby
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Bondi Beach
1970s
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Splashproof #1
1994
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang, like many of his fellow Australian photographers, cannot help but be fascinated with the beach. In 1969, Yang left Brisbane for the bright lights of Sydney, and he fell in love with the city. At a distance from his family and Queensland’s conservatism, Sydney provided an opportunity for reinvention.
It was here that he combined his two photographic passions – landscape and people. Yang embraced the bleached allure of the city’s eastern beaches and took many iconic photographs of Bondi, Tamarama and Clovelly. …
Yang’s beach images present a refreshingly different framing of the typical Australian beach scene. The usual shots of bronzed female bodies or recreational pursuits take a backseat. Instead, Yang takes immense joy in the male figure, and his works represent a desirous male gaze on desirable male bodies.
The beach captured Yang’s eye from early in his career. At the time he started exploring the beach in his new Sydney home, Yang was also a jobbing social photographer, capturing celebrities and the ‘beautiful people’ behind the scenes at A-list parties for magazines. His approach to this work was in the photo-journalist style of capturing the unguarded moment.
Of his passion for taking images of the beach, Yang is a romantic at heart and has said:
“There’s an impulse in me that makes me go for the runny make-up, the unguarded moment, the Freudian slip. I mean I could photograph the plastic bags in the water, the rolls of fat, but the beach brings out the romantic in me. I’m overwhelmed by the beauty of it – the space, the surf, the sand and all that flesh. I’ve never gotten beyond the obvious.”
Rosie Hays. “William Yang: The Beach,” on the QAGOMA website 17 June, 2021 [Online] Cited 10/08/2021
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Great Wave off Clovelly
2005/2016
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Fine Art Pearl
40 x 40cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Born 1943, Mareeba, Qld Lives and works Sydney, NSW)
Lifesaver Double
1987/2017
Digital print
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Lifesavers #3
1987
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Fie Art Metallic Pearl
32 x 49.5cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Checking Out Bondi
1981/2017
Digital print
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
The Power of Being Seen
William Yang’s work, intimate and considered, draws on the artist’s own lived experience. Yang’s personal stories inform his spoken-word performances and photography, and he often scribes these stories directly onto his photographic prints. Drawn to people, Yang’s work reveals unsettling narratives in his own life, in the lives of his subjects, and in society. Adept at uncovering the unvarnished beauty and hidden foibles of our lives, storytelling is intrinsic to his practice. The artist spoke with exhibition curator Rosie Hays.
Rosie Hays: Are there stories you feel must be told? What draws you to the stories you tell from your own life?
William Yang: I [was] brought up as an assimilated Australian. Neither my brother, Alan, or my sister, Frances, or I learned to speak Chinese. Partly because my father’s clan was the Hakka, so he spoke Hakka, whereas my mother’s clan was the See Yap, and she spoke Cantonese, so English was their common language and that was what we spoke at home. My mother could have taught us Cantonese as it was generally left up to her to do that sort of thing, but she never did. She thought being Chinese was a complete liability and wanted us to be more Australian than the Australians. So, the Chinese part of me was completely denied and unacknowledged until I was in my mid-30s and I became Taoist. It was through my engagement with Chinese philosophy that I embraced my Chinese heritage. People at the time called me Born Again Chinese, and that’s not a bad description as there was a certain zealousness to the process, but now I see it as a liberation from racial suppression, and I prefer to say I came out as a Chinese.
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Chinese New Year Party Year of the Rabbit
1999
Gelatin silver print
51 x 61.5cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
My first big success was my show ‘Sydneyphiles’ at the Australian Centre for Photography in 1977. It was mainly about my social life in Sydney, with portraits of people I had met. Besides my own set of artistic types (I knew Brett Whiteley, Martin Sharp, Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson), I brushed with celebrities on the social rounds working for magazines. The exhibition caused a sensation. I knew then that people were my subject. I found that they wanted to see themselves on the gallery walls, they wanted representation. A compromising photo might cause annoyance, but it was better than being left out. There has always been an appetite for celebrities, well, that was to be expected. A vicarious interest in celebrity life still fuels the media. But I showed many photos of the emerging gay community as well. Australian photos of this type had not been shown in institutions before and it got a mixed reaction. Some said that these works shouldn’t be shown at a public institution, but mostly the pictures were accepted, especially by the gay community. A few were angry with me for outing them, but mostly I was hailed as a hero and was metaphorically given the keys to Oxford Street. I sensed that the mood of the gay community at the time was this: throughout history our community has been invisible. These photos may not be pretty, but we recognise them, and we accept them. We want our stories told.
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Four film directors
1981
Inkjet print on solid substrate Kapaplast
53 x 80cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Brett Whiteley, Martin Sharp, Wirian
1982
Inkjet print on solid substrate Kapaplast
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Party at the Whiteleys’, Lavender Bay
1982
Inkjet print on solid substrate Kapaplast
65 x 110cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
Installation view of the exhibition William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) showing at centre right, Brett Whiteley, Lavander Bay, Sydney (1975, below); and directly below this, Cate Blanchett: The star in her dressing room. After “Hedda Gabler.” Wharf Theatre. Sydney (2004, below)
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Brett Whiteley, Lavender Bay, Sydney
1975
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Cate Blanchett: The star in her dressing room. After “Hedda Gabler.” Wharf Theatre. Sydney
2004
Inkjet print on solid substrate Kapaplast
54 x 80cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
These days I don’t take as many photographs. I’m sorting through my collection, trying to get it into some sort of order, and trying to digitise the negatives and the colour transparencies […]. I don’t want to be a photographer who dies leaving a pile of mouldy negatives for someone else to sort out […]. Every time I look through my collection, I am surprised because I have largely forgotten what happened in the past. Photography is a major aid to memory and the photographer a witness to the past. A photograph captures a moment in time. You don’t have to do anything special for this to happen, just press the shutter. There is something in the nature of the camera to freeze these moments in time, and there is something in the nature of the world to change and move on, so these moments never occur again.
In the early 1980s I started to do slide projection. It started off as a way to show my colour photography. At the time the colour printing process, Cibachrome, was expensive, and projection was a cheaper way showing my colour images. In 1980 in Adelaide, I met Ian de Gruchy, who did slide projection as his main art form. I was interested in his dissolve unit – a device using two projectors where the projected images dissolved into each other. Music was used, usually minimal music, and the result was known as an audio-visual. When one projects slides, as in a living room slide show, there is a tendency to talk with the slides, explaining them, and I started to do that. I worked with audio-visuals for seven years during the 80s until I had nine photographic essays, or short stories, to string together into a one man show. It was called ‘The Face of Buddha’ and I presented it at the Downstairs Belvoir Street Theatre in 1989. I lost money on that show, but still consider it a success. Everyone liked the form, story-telling with images and music.
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
“William Yang performing Sadness”
Sydney 1992
Photo: Peter Elfes (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 | Gallery of Modern Art
© William Yang
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Production still from Sadness
1999
Director: Tony Ayres
Image courtesy: National Film and Sound Archive, Australia and William Yang
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
‘Allan’ from the monologue ‘Sadness’
1992
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
‘Allan’ from the monologue ‘Sadness’
1992
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
The most popular story was called ‘About My Mother’. I told the story about my mother’s family, how they came to Australia in the 1880s from Guang Dong province in China. My mother’s sister, my Aunt Bessie, married a rich landowner, William Fang Yuen, who was murdered by the white manager on his cane farm at Marilyan in north Queensland in 1922. I got an Australia Council grant to do my third performance piece, ‘Sadness’, in 1992. There were two themes: the first involved the AIDS pandemic in Sydney where many gay men, some of them my friends, were dying; and the second was a trip I took to north Queensland to talk to my relatives about William Fang Yuen’s murder. The two themes formed a powerful story about death and legacy. It was an immediate hit and toured Australia and the world. International entrepreneurs wanted my performance pieces, which they considered unique, not my exhibitions, so I kept doing more performance pieces and they became my main artistic expression.
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
William in Cane Fields
2008
From ‘My uncle’s murder’ portfolio 2008
Inkjet print on Innova Softex paper
59 x 91cm
© William Yang
Photograph: Jenni Carter
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Self Portrait, Listening
2017
Inkjet print on Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag
38 x 60cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
The performance pieces changed my photographic practice. Before the 1990s, I made my living from freelance work. I would do whatever jobs people would pay me money to do. Then I found I could make a living doing my performance pieces, so I didn’t have to work for other people. I was able to channel all my energy into my own work and I became more productive. My performance pieces were about stories and I realised that many of my photos had stories behind them. I started writing the text directly onto the photo with a pen. My first series was about men with whom I had had encounters. All those photos had good stories. I have continued to do written works, as I call them, and the pictures with my handwriting have become the signifier of my work. Now I often choose images because they have a story.
Rosie Hays: Do you ever feel you’re telling other people’s stories, or are they your stories that happen to intersect with other people?
William Yang: When I ran out of my own stories, I wanted to tell an Aboriginal story because I felt the Chinese and the Aboriginal people had something in common: both had suffered under British colonialism. In my commissioned piece ‘Shadows’, I tried to tell an Aboriginal story about a community in Enngonia in north-western New South Wales, and it was successful in that I made myself part of the story, but I felt a little uncomfortable telling their story. Later I found someone, Noeline Briggs-Smith, who could tell her own story, and we did a story-telling duet on stage [called] ‘Meeting at Moree’, where we told alternating chapters of our stories on stage. She […] had a much stronger story than me. She had suffered more and worse injustices than I had, but there were interesting intersections in our stories.
Rosie Hays: Something we highlight in the exhibition is your connection to landscape. How would you describe your relationship to nature / the landscape, and has it changed over time?
William Yang: Most photographers have a go at nature. Everyone has photographed a sunset. I had my first serious encounter with photographing nature when I was recovering from a bad case of hepatitis at Frogs Hollow, Maleny, in 1979. I felt fragile from the illness and taking photos made me feel I could still do things. Looking at the photos now, the pictures are a beginner’s view. That’s the thing about nature: it’s been done a billion times before, and it’s difficult [to] escape cliché, but I had to start somewhere and I got a few good ones.
When I became Taoist, I took on a whole new philosophy. I came to appreciate nature, in the form of landscape, as a source and a driving force behind everything that exists. It was constantly changing and renewing itself. Everything about nature was beautiful because it was essentially always itself. I found I could apply a concept of beauty to nature, at least compared to the human nature I was photographing at the time. Later I began to see nature as a titanic struggle for survival […].
I came to realise that the landscape which moved me the most was the country around Dimbulah in north Queensland (on the Atherton Tableland), where I had grown up. It was part of my identity, part of my idea of home. I had absorbed it, it had imprinted itself upon me, and, although I did not realise it at the time – this was before I had articulated an artistic consciousness – it was there in my consciousness and I could draw upon it. So, in the early 90s, I made several trips up to Dimbulah, checking out the country that I remembered from my childhood. Nothing quite fitted my memories, but perhaps that’s a thing about childhood and memory. Nevertheless, I photographed a series on a medium format camera, trying to recapture memories. Now I enjoy returning to Dimbulah and seeing the landscape. It still triggers off emotions, but I feel they have become more distant. This text is from my print William at Thornborough, 2006:
“I have left these places and I have changed. These places still hold me but I move around these hills like a ghost. It is the motherland which formed and nourished me, from where I came, but to which I can never return.”
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Climbing Huang Shan
2005
Inkjet print on Innova Softex paper
41 x 48cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
Installation view of the exhibition William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) showing Return to the place of childhood. Dimbulah (2016, below)
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Boranup Karri Forest #1
2018
Inkjet print on Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag
50 x 150cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Return to the place of childhood. Dimbulah
2016
Inkjet print on Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag
50 x 150cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
Installation views of the exhibition William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) showing at lower left, Boranup Karri Forest #1 (2018, above)
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Earth Below, Heaven Above (still)
2020
Two-channel video, 16:9, 5:36 minutes, colour, sound
Editor: Jack Okeby
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
Rosie Hays: What are your aspirations as an artist? What is the aim for your work in the larger sense?
William Yang: Two of my most important realisations were, firstly, that I was not white but Chinese, and secondly, that I was not straight, but gay. I probably realised these at an early age, but it took me a long time to articulate the condition and to come to terms with it. Personally, I suffered more pain being a closeted gay than being Chinese. These are both big themes in my work. When I started including gay work in my exhibitions, some photographers told me it [was] a phase I was going through and I’d be better off dealing with universal issues. They were right, in a way, because by continuing to deal with marginalised issues, my audience base is much smaller. I would probably have made more money sticking with celebrity lives and continuing the status quo, but it is important for me to talk about being gay and to talk about racial difference, even if they are commercially unpopular subjects. Nowadays, there is more acceptance of being gay here in Australia, and likewise, there is more awareness of racial difference, but in the wider world this is not always the case. It is a cause worth pursuing, and documentary photography with a personal story thrown in is a good way of doing it. I want to acknowledge the activists around the world that have made social change happen.
I want my work to embrace my life. I’ve managed to live to a mature age – I was fortunate not to die young as many of my colleagues did during the AIDS pandemic. One lives a life, and I am not the same person as I was when I was younger. Then I had more energy, had more opinions, some of them obnoxious – in short, I had many of the traits of a young person that old people like to complain about. But one learns from life, and I have lived to this age and can see there is a shape to one’s life. It has to do with the things you believe in and the choices you make (I always knew being an artist would be a hard road), it is shaped by external forces beyond your control, and it is also shaped by luck. Still, I consider my life a fortunate one.
I think I like stories because they are about people and the world. They somehow embrace humanity. I would like my art to convey feelings, emotions, what it is like to be a sentient human: experiencing joy, laughter and sadness, to realise we are vulnerable, that we have our failings, we do bad things, but we are capable of forgiveness, kindness and love.
Rosie Hays is Associate Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA She spoke with the artist in 2020.
This is an edited excerpt of the original interview, which appears in the exhibition publication William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen, available at the QAGOMA Store
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Deposition. Innisfail Court House. 1922
1990
From ‘About my mother’ portfolio 2003
Gelatin silver photograph on paper
51.3 x 61.1cm (comp.)
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art purchased 2004
© William Yang
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Self portrait #1
1992, printed 2013
Inkjet print on paper
87 x 119cm (comp.)
Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art purchase 2013
© William Yang
William Yang Self portrait #1 / A Director’s Perspective
Join QAGOMA Director Chris Saines CNZM as he discusses William Yang’s Self portrait #1 1992 (printed 2013)
William Yang’s work, intimate and considered, draws on the artist’s own lived experience. Yang’s personal stories inform his spoken-word performances and photography, and he often scribes these stories directly onto his photographic prints. Drawn to people, Yang’s work reveals unsettling narratives in his own life, in the lives of his subjects, and in society. Adept at uncovering the unvarnished beauty and hidden foibles of our lives, storytelling is intrinsic to his practice.
Self Portrait #1
Yang’s unflinching photographic gaze draws from the documentary tradition. Since the 1980s, Yang has displayed an unyielding persistence in unearthing stories that society, or even his subjects, might prefer to remain hidden. His instinct and passion is to present the whole, flawed story, not just the glossy surface.
With stories such as his uncle’s murder, Yang courts his family’s disapproval by airing hidden family stories, balancing potential indiscretions with the importance of telling real stories that reveal experiences or communities often left out of public discourse.
…
In the mid 1980s, Yang met Yensoon Tsai, a young Taiwanese woman who would become a close friend. Tsai taught Yang the tenets of the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, which led him to explore his Chinese-Australian identity.
Throughout the late 1980s and 90s in Australia, multicultural stories emerged across various art forms. Yang was part of this wave of artists rejecting a suppression of their cultural histories, and who instead wanted to highlight and celebrate diversity. Yang travelled throughout regional and urban Australia documenting the lives of Chinese-Australians, and the landscapes reflecting the legacy of the Chinese in Australia, such as religious shrines and mining sites.
Self Portrait #1 is a landscape work (in the way Yang talks about landscape which is often rooted in people and place and memory) as much as it a portrait work. Capturing the landscape is part of Yang’s somewhat diaristic approach to processing his social and physical environment.
When Yang returns to the Queensland landscape from his childhood, he characterises it as a site to escape from. He needed to escape from racist school bullying, constrictive family expectations, and the dread that his sexuality may be met with disapproval. Yang revisits his childhood home regularly, and some of his most potent performances and photographs come from connecting family and place. The series ‘My Uncle’s Murder’ – and its recounting of an injustice borne of racism dating from 1922 – resulted from such a trip. In his later works, he makes an uneasy peace with these past experiences that are embedded in the landscape of his youth.
Rosie Hays. “William Yang’s work reveals unsettling narratives in his own life,” on the QAGOMA website 4 October, 2020 [Online] Cited 10/08/2021
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Waiting for the Parade to Start
2019
Inkjet print on solid substrate Kapaplast
56.5 x 85cm
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Jac Vidgen and Akira Isogawa, Sweatbox Party
1989
Inkjet print on solid substrate Kapaplast
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Patrick White #1, living room, Martin Road
1988
Gelatin silver photograph, ed. 2/10
45.6 x 36.4cm
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant purchased 1998
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
My Generation (Brett Whiteley) (detail)
1975
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
My Generation
Queensland-born, Sydney-based artist William Yang describes a moment in Sydney when a number of creative groups came together to generate an artistic wave that swept across Australian society.
The intersections of the tight literary circle of Nobel award winner Patrick White and his partner, Manoly Lascaris, with the theatrical circle, their friends Jim Sharman and actress Kate Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick, in turn, models frocks in the exuberant fashion parades organised by designers Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee, while artists Peter Tully and David McDiarmid extend the tongue-in-cheek Australiana of the two fashionistas’ outfits with witty accessories. Their parades and parties at retail outlet Flamingo Park, a magnet for influential people in business, politics and the arts, determined the look of the 1970s and early 1980s. Tully and McDiarmid used their bravura visuals to jump start the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, giving the event its unique and unforgettable style. The pair lived out a parallel lifestyle that might epitomise the Australian story of gay liberation, with its heady rush unfolding into aching tragedy.
Golden couple Brett and Wendy Whiteley enjoyed the creative atmosphere of the swinging ’60s and the plunge into a riotous world of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Yang shows Brett painting, smoking and partying with the beautiful people, and his eventual deterioration as heroin took a fearful hold. The early death of their beautiful daughter, Arkie, was another aspect of this fated family history. Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee eventually split; Kee takes Danton Hughes, the son of Robert Hughes, as a lover; Danton suicides; Kee takes up Buddhism. Yang portrays lives that unfold, flower or wither: lives lived.
Yang’s generation is not life as reported in the newspapers but ‘as I saw it’: a personal account summed up as a litany of parties, of innocence lost and worldliness gained, a continuum of his search for contact and meaning. Like his contemporaries Rennie Ellis or Michael Rosen, William Yang is a social photographer, a recorder of life. His strength lies in creating a living testament, and his medium’s strength is that it is necessarily shared. He offers no moral tale, nor any notion of karma to underscore the events: just the three basic but vital stories – birth, love and death.
Extract from Michael Desmond. “William Yang: My Generation,” in Artlines 1-2009 in “William Yang: Portraits,” on the QAGOMA website 22 September, 2017 [Online] Cited 10/08/2021.
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
David Gulpilil
1978
Inkjet print on solid substrate Kapaplast
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist
William Yang (Australia b. 1943)
Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee
1979
Inkjet print on solid substrate Kapaplast
© William Yang
Courtesy: The artist