Patrick White (1912–1990) remains Australia’s only recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1973. Through novels including Voss, The Tree of Man and The Eye of the Storm, he transformed Australian literature with psychologically complex explorations of identity and the human condition. In later life, White became an outspoken public intellectual, advocating for environmental protection, heritage conservation and nuclear disarmament while remaining fiercely protective of his private life.
Photographer William Yang first met White in 1977 after a performance of White’s play Big Toys and soon became part of the writer’s close circle. Their friendship afforded Yang a rare intimacy, allowing him to photograph White away from the public sphere. Yang’s 1995 book Patrick White: The late years is a collection of many of his photographs of White’s life and work, including this one, photographed in 1980 during a lunch hosted by actor and mutual friend Kate Fitzpatrick at her home in Kings Cross. Rather than presenting the Nobel laureate as an imposing cultural figure, Yang captured a man of quiet introspection and vulnerability. Renowned for an intensely sustained body of work that examines issues of cultural and sexual identity, particularly LGBTQIA+ communities from the 1970s onwards, Yang’s photographs combine documentary observation with deeply personal storytelling.
Purchased 1998
© William Yang
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
William Yang on his heritage and becoming a photographer in the 70s.
Sarah Engledow describes the fall-out once Brett Whiteley stuck Patrick White’s list of his loves and hates onto his great portrait of the writer.
