National Portrait Gallery

Marcia Ella 2006 Sahlan Hayes
Hand printed on resin-coated paper
85 x 100 cm

Joshua Ross 2006 Sahlan Hayes
Hand printed on resin-coated paper
85 x 100 cm

SAHLAN HAYES

Sahlan Hayes was born in the United Kingdom and lived with his family in various countries – United States of America, New Zealand and the United Kingdom – before settling in Australia. He worked as a cadet photographer in Sydney for The Australian in the late 1980s prior to moving to the United Kingdom in 1991 where he worked as a freelance photographer. Hayes has been a full-time photographer with the Sydney Morning Herald since 1994 where he photographs news, features and portraiture. Throughout his career he has worked on many varied assignments. Apart from his portrait photographs of many Australian and international ‘icons’ he has documented the refugee crisis in Croatia during the war, the northern migration of the humpback whales along the east coast of NSW and most recently the discovery of Hobbit remains in Flores, Indonesia. Sahlan Hayes was a participating artist in the National Portrait Gallery’s magazine photography exhibition Glossy 2: Faces, Magazines 2005-2006 and a number of his photographs of Australian chefs were included in the Gallery’s exhibition Masters of Fare: Chefs, Winemakers, Providores in 2004. Hayes’ portrait of Margaret Whitlam won the Nikon Walkley Photographic Portrait Award for 2005.

"Indigenous Australians have had a major impact on this country’s sporting landscape. In this series of portraits I wanted to recognise and celebrate their significance in Australian history by depicting contemporary athletes but also revisiting some older sporting identities as a means to renew their place in history. Most early portraits of Indigenous sportspeople are formal in nature and the subjects appear detached and awkward. I wanted to subvert the early portraits’ formal nature, creating new and warmer portraits. Because of Australia's colonial history I believe these portraits have an important relationship not just to the Commonwealth Games but to Australian sport in general."

~Sahlan Hayes