PERTH author and Walkley-award winning journalist Richard Goodwin stumbled across the fascinating story of Perth photographer William (Bill) Angove quite by chance while writing an obituary about a friend for another newspaper.
“It actually started in May 2020 when I wrote an obituary in the paper for Ken Knox, a photographer and rock collector in Perth who I befriended for the last eight years of his life,” Richard tells Have a Go News.
“In the obituary I mentioned that Ken had been introduced to the WA Camera Club by Bill Angove. Bill didn’t marry but had a sister, Gwenda, both siblings being born in Albany.
“His sister had three daughters and a son and two of them contacted me and came to my home. I had heard of Bill Angove because Ken Knox had mentioned him to me when we were celebrating the WA Camera Club centenary.
“Angove was mentioned as one of the luminaries from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. Two nieces visited with bundles of prints, negatives and slides of Bill’s which they had kept for 40 years. Bill had died in 1980 at only 55 from a disease attributed to excessive exposure to darkroom chemicals”
“They said they would like to donate the prints, negatives and slides to a permanent collection. I said I would help but we had to write his story first.”
The result of Richard’s painstaking quest is the just-launched book, Sparks of Genius, The Inventive Photography of Bill Angove, a wonderful look at a photographer long forgotten but brought to life again.
Bill Angove was a leading member of the WA Camera Club between 1947 and 1955 and a prominent figure in WA’s photographic and cultural history.
Trained as a painter and architectural draughtsman, Angove’s inventive avant-garde style was hailed abroad and nationally. He exhibited across Australia, won awards and judged landmark at photography competitions.
Highly regarded and admired by contemporaries such as photo journalist Roger Garwood, the late photographic icon Richard Woldendorp and best-selling artist Ken Done, he was a man whose fascinating connections included photographers with international reputations, Helmut Newton, Sam Haskins and Lord Patrick Lichfield.
Yet, except for a handful of press clippings in the State Library of WA and a few of his own authored articles in photographic magazines, Angove’s story has never been told.
Richard says what helped him enormously with the book was the fact his family had not only kept all his work but also his personal papers including diaries, letters, catalogues, business correspondence, love letters and various items.
“One of the family had even done a death-bed oral history so there was a cassette tape of Bill in his dying days reflecting on his early life in London. It was an absolute gift to a biographer to have access to that.
“I found, through Bill’s niece, some of the people who knew him including Fremantle based journalist Roger Garwood, Ted Edkins who launched the book actually studied with Bill in the 70s, several fellow photographers who knew him and a couple of models who worked with Bill.
“I tracked down a few people beyond Perth who knew Bill including Ken Done who worked in advertising in London in the 60s and who hired Bill to do quite a few jobs including photographing his own wedding.”
Richard says Bill Angove had two stints in London, four years initially, followed by three years in Sydney, then another nine years in London, returning to WA in 1970.
“He felt a bit unappreciated in WA which can happen and it was true for a lot of creative Australians who made a name for themselves overseas. Some stayed away and some came back, but Bill felt underrated which I cover in the book.
“He became a photography teacher and worked at Perth Tech. When he died, an award in his name, the Bill Angove award, for best graduate student of the year was launched with Lord Lichfield presenting the first such award.”
Richard says Bill knew a lot of people. “He got into the fashion scene and was friends with Helmut Newton and Sam Haskins. One of his first London gigs was with Cecil Beaton so the book is full of tantalising connections.
“Bill was also a painter and loved abstract work, as depicted in the book cover. When he first went to London, the Australian Women’s Weekly did a big spread on him, ‘this Perth man with his crazy pictures’ was being noticed.
“His big breakthrough job was for a young advertising executive in London’s West End which gave him a contract for a drug company now known as Pfizer which had invented the first antibiotic and wanted to advertise it in the British Medical Journal.
“So he was commissioned to do three colour plates in the style of something way out, avant-garde, and that was what really made his name.
”Bill’s work was included in the first WA Art Gallery photographic exhibition for the State’s sesquicentenary in 1979 which shows photography was just starting to be respected as an art form.”
Sparks of Genius – The Inventive Photography of Bill Angove (Linellen Press) was launched in Floreat on May 2, the centenary of Bill Angove’s birth.
The book can be purchased from the History West book shop run by the Royal WA Historical Society at 49 Broadway, Nedlands, and from its online store https://hist west.org.au/shop.
