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| Alf Rendell and the Tauranga Aero Club Tiger Moth that he used for aerial
photography Photograph by Lee Switzer, 2006 Lee Switzer Photographic Collection, Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī |
It was perhaps inevitable that Alf Rendell would become a photographer. He was born in 1917, son of Whakatāne photographer Robert John Rendell who had plied his trade throughout the central and eastern North Island for at least the previous two decades. When Alf was a mere eight months old the family moved to Tauranga, Bob Rendell becoming a meter reader for the Power Board while taking photographs for the Auckland Weekly News. Eventually Rendell senior purchased the existing business of Robert Meers in 1926, situated in the old Triangle building at the bottom of Devonport Road, and he soon became the town’s leading, and most prolific, studio and scenic photographer.
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The Strand from Taumatakahawai Pa, 1949 |
Alf left school in 1934 during the Depression. He had little chance of finding a job so he started working for his father, following the footsteps of his older sister Marj (Marjorie) who was already working in the darkroom and hand-colouring prints. He soon graduated to taking photos himself using a half-plate camera with glass plates to produce scenic postcards, printed by the thousand, and cut film (5”x4”), film packs and roll film for other large and medium format work.
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| Mauao from Otumoetai, c. 1950 Photographed by Alfred H. Rendell, hand-coloured by Marjorie West Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 0243/11 |
At the end of 1938 his father retired due to ill health. Alf took over business in January 1939, moving from the Triangle building to premises further up Devonport Road at No 10 (opposite the Star Hotel), and running it as a retail photographic shop. He also did outdoor photography, mostly on the weekends, including taking a number of yachting photographs, and keeping him extremely busy. The shop had to be closed when he went into the army in 1941, after the outbreak of the Second World War.
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| Allen Unsworth Subdivision, Omokoroa Peninsula from the air, 15 August 1956 Photographed by Alfred H. Rendell, hand-coloured by Marjorie West Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī Ref. 21-1307 |
Alf initially served in an infantry battalion (34th Battalion, 3rd Division), garrisoned on the island of Tongatapu (Kingdom of Tonga) from October 1942 until March 1943. On arrival they were ordered to hand in their cameras but Alf, with credentials as a professional photographer and a good stock of film, was selected to be the Battalion photographer. He was issued with a bicycle, given permission to roam the island, and took photographs of local Tongans during his spare time (Fioan Kean, pers. comm.) He was soon transferred to the Public Relations Group, and then spent the rest of the war in New Caledonia, running a ramshackle dark room with “very, very modest” equipment, printing and publishing press and archival photos taken all over the Pacific theatre, including the Solomon Islands. Occasionally Alf would get out to take photographs, for which he used a large format Speed Graphic press camera with cut film.
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| Rendell’s Camera House (at right), Devonport Road, July 1965 Photograph by Bay of Plenty Times staff photographer Tauranga City Library, Gifford-Cross Photographic Series, Ref. gca-9714 |
After three years overseas, Alf returned to Tauranga in 1945 on being demobilized from the army and started his business almost from scratch. Fortunately, his landlord had reserved his old premises downstairs in the “old Chrysler building,” for him while he was away. Materials were in very short supply in the first few years, but he opened the retail shop, did outdoor work on the weekends, and took candid photographs from a small canvas studio set up in the street. Glass plates were out, and film was in. Street photography had become very popular during the war, a trend probably popularized by American servicemen on their way to and from the Pacific. His postcard views included the ever popular views of the Strand, the gardens and the floral ship.
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| Greerton from the air, looking down Cameron Road, 1950s Photographed by Alfred H. Rendell, hand-coloured by Marjorie West Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī Ref. 12-625 |
In the mid- to late 1940s oblique aerial photos, and in particular hand-coloured enlarged prints, were being popularized countrywide by White’s Aviation and a number of other operators. Alf started to use the Tauranga Aero Club’s Tiger Moth as a platform for taking a series of views that showed a rapidly growing Tauranga. He described the experience as tricky, requiring him to be seated in the front cockpit and operating the camera over his shoulder while the plane travelled at an altitude of under 2000 feet. He also hired out movie projectors, which may have been a key reason to why he hardly ever had a moment to himself (Fiona Kean, pers. comm.)
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| Main Beach at Mount Maunganui, c. 1958 Photographed by Alfred H. Rendell, hand-coloured by Marjorie West Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī Ref. 21-1919 |
Other outside work included commissions for commercial buildings, school photos, wedding portraits, a variety of events and occasional press work, but he did not take studio portraits. He used a Linhof 5”x4” rangefinder on a tripod with cut film or film packs for large format work, Zeiss Ikon folding cameras and a Rolleiflex twin-lens-reflex – his favourite – with 120-format roll-film for other work.
When he opened a studio in Cameron Road in the late 1940s, Alf employed an assistant who had previously employed at Amy Harper’s fashionable Belwood Studios in Auckland’s Queen Street and Karangahape Road, and who came up with the name Renwood Studios, which was used for the new business. In 1957 he sold the outdoors part of that business to assistant Adrian Orr, who then went out on his own, opening premises in East’s Building, Devonport Road. Alf continued with the photographic supplies retail shop. Although he needed to be on the premises from 8am until the close of business at 5pm every weekday, this gave him some freedom for family and other pursuits at weekend. In the twelve years since the war ended, Alf had taken only two four-day breaks from his business.
From the early 1960s his son Graham came to work for him. They built a branch at 155 Maunganui Road, Mt. Maunganui, opened in 1970, with a small studio and retail outlet, and where Alf’s wife Joan operated a gift shop.
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| Bernie Judd, Alf Rendell (right) and Rendells Camera House, Devonport Road,
December 1974 Photograph by Bay of Plenty Times staff photographer Tauranga City Library, Gifford-Cross Photographic Series, Ref. gcc-27235 |
When the building his shop was in was demolished in July 1972, Alf bought out the business of Jim Kirk, who had a little shop in the Regent Theatre building, and operated from there until the new Bay Savings Bank building was finished in December 1974, when he moved back in. He sold the branch at the Mount in 1975, when Graham took over the Tauranga shop and Alf helped out part-time for the next four to five years. Graham started another retail shop in the Mid City Mall across the road on the corner of Spring Street in 1974, named Mid City Fast Photos. The business was later sold to Ashley’s Magnificent Photo Shop.
Alf didn’t keep count of the photographs he had taken, but the films used for postcard production (each containing 8, 12 or 14 exposures) were numbered and reached eight or nine thousand. A further series of other films was numbered up to around 2000. At a conservative estimate, that amounts to perhaps 100,000 photographs. Alf died in December 2019, aged 102, leaving a huge legacy of prints and negatives in Tauranga’s institutions and homes, and a place in our hearts. Thank you Alf, for your friendship to many and huge generosity to anyone who showed an interest in your work. You are missed.
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| Alf
Rendell loading a Rolleiflex camera, 2015 © Moana Bianchin | cloudnine.co.nz |
Alf Rendell
may not have needed much introduction to long time residents of Tauranga, where
he lived almost his entire life, or to members of the Society, of which he was
an active and long-time member. He and his photographs have featured in Journal
articles and in the magnificent volume Rendell’s Tauranga accompanied by
an exhibition eight years ago, prepared with Fiona Kean. A 1997-1998 interview
with Alf by Jinty Rorke has recently been digitized and made available on the Tauranga
Library’s Pae Korokī digital resource,
supplemented with a second interview by Harley Couper in 2012. This account
leans heavily on material gathered during both of these interviews, as well as in
numerous informal conversations with Alf by Fiona Kean and myself.
References
Payne, Brett (2014) Omokoroa Point, by Alf Rendell, Tauranga Historical Society Blog, 30 Sep 2014
Payne, Brett (2018) Robert John Rendell, Historical Review, Bay of Plenty Journal of History, Vol 66, No 2, p19-26
Kean, Fiona (2013) Alf Rendell, photographer, Tauranga Historical Society Blog, 2 Aug 2013
Kean, Fiona (2015) Rendell’s Tauranga: Historic Tauranga from Above, Tauranga Historical Society Blog, 30 Oct 2015
Kean, Fiona (2019) Alf Rendell turns 102, Tauranga Historical Society Blog, 2 Nov 2019
Kean, Fiona (2020) Alf Rendell, 1917-2019, Tauranga Historical Society Blog, 28 Jan 2020
Rendell, Alfred H. & Couper, Harley (2012) Alf Rendell interviewed by Harley Couper for the Tauranga Memories website, Tauranga, 2012, Digital file, Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī.
Rendell, Alfred H. & Kean, Fiona (2015) Rendell’s Tauranga: Historic Tauranga from Above. Paper Plus, Tauranga
Rendell, Alfred H. & Rorke, Jinty (1998) A. (Alf) H. Rendell (1917-2019) interviewed by Jinty Rorke, 1997-1998, Digitised Video8 Tape, Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī Ref. AV 21-002/21
This is a perfect entry for Sepia Saturday, Feb. 4th! Will "Photo Sleuth" appear again?
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