Born in the United Kingdom, Sahlan Hayes lived with his family in the USA, New Zealand and the United Kingdom before settling in Australia. After working as a cadet photographer in Sydney for the Australian in the late 1980s, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1991 to work freelance. Since 1994, he has been a full-time photographer with the Sydney Morning Herald, undertaking news, features and portraiture assignments. Apart from his portrait photographs of many prominent Australian and international figures, he has documented the refugee crisis in Croatia during the war, the northern migration of humpback whales along the east coast of NSW and the discovery of prehistoric human remains in Flores, Indonesia. His portrait of Margaret Whitlam, acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 2006, won the Nikon Walkley Photographic Portrait Award of 2005. The Gallery also has his photographs of academic and writer Donald Horne, and Indigenous athletes Harry Williams, Danny Morsieu, Josh Ross, Marcia Ella, Larry Corowa and Percy Hobson.
