[2] Yang's photography and performances span over 50 years and document the uncharted growth and influence of Sydney's gay subculture from the 1970s through to the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s and beyond.
[3][4] In the late 1960s Yang relocated from Brisbane to Sydney, abandoned architecture studies and joined an experimental theatre company, Performance Syndicate as a playwright.
[4] Yang says of this time that there was an almost frenzied party milieu especially evident in the large RAT and Sleaze Balls that belied a sense of fatalism with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Embracing his Chinese ethnicity and heritage for the first time, Yang took lessons on Taoism, travelled to China and then eventually back to his home town of Dimbulah in North Queensland.
[4] Such a full circle exposed Yang to the beauty and acceptance of the harsh Australian landscape entwined with recognition and pride in his Chinese heritage.
[8] In over-writing his photographic images, Yang became increasingly aware of the importance of text in communicating and personalising ideas, of placing himself within the story which could never be objective.
[11] Yang's chronicle of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s depicting images of close friends in the final stages of death is, according to Helen Ennis different from early nineteenth and twentieth century post mortem photography.
[13] Ennis also contrasts his publicly exhibited work to more recent depictions of death and dying using digital technology held privately by surviving loved ones.