What to Expect

William Yang leads a workshop over five days about performative storytelling with personal pictures, with an emphasis on migrant stories. Yang has combined photography and monologue in significant works such as Sadness, Bloodlinks, My Generation and Friends of Dorothy which have toured extensively in Australia and internationally. In this workshop, participants will have first-hand experience of his process, using their own family stories and photographs to develop a short storytelling performance. There are only four spots available in this workshop.

Workshop Sessions
Monday 28 August: 6–9pm
Tuesday 29, Wednesday 30 and Thursday 31 August: Individual 1-hour sessions. Each participant will meet with William once each day at time to suit.
Friday 1 September: 6–9pm
These workshop sessions are designed so participants who need to work during the day can attend.

Public Performance
The workshop will culminate in a public performance featuring Yang and workshop participants on Saturday 2 September at Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute. Participants will need to be available for a rehearsal on Saturday from 2–5pm. The event will start with workshop participants, and end with a longer presentation by him.

Have a question? Feel free to email Education & Events Coordinator Christine McFetridge at education@ballaratfoto.org.

What to Bring

• Digital or printed images to accompany your story

About Your Teacher

William Yang is a pre-eminent Australian photographer known for an intensely sustained body of work that examines issues of cultural and sexual identity, and which unflinchingly documents the lives of his friends and community and his own lived experience with curiosity, sensitivity and humour. He is known in particular for his documentation of the Sydney LGBTIQ+ community from the 1970s onwards, including the evolution of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, and for photographic series engaging with the impact of HIV/AIDS on his friends and community, his sense of identity as a Chinese-Australian, and his family history and relationships. Yang’s work has won numerous awards and accolades, and is held in the collections of Wollongong City Council, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, National Portrait Gallery, Queensland Art Gallery, State Library of New South Wales and National Library of Australia.