Bill Rowlinson, doyen of black and white master printers, has died age 78, writes Chris Dickie. His funeral was held today at St Paul’s, “the actors’ church”, in Covent Garden. There isn't a “printers’ church”, yet.
Bill Rowlinson began making b&w prints at Wimbledon School of Art in the early 1950s where he was supposed to be studying painting. After service in the airforce, marriage and a couple of years as general dogsbody at Wickhams Studio in Victoria Street, London, he emigrated to Canada. He found little photographic work there, other than a spell with a child portrait photographer, but later landed a job with United Press in Detroit by, so he said, being the only applicant among 30 hopefuls who could spell. This was a long way from the fine art printing that was to come: three-minute development, drying in meths, then a print straight onto the wire.
He saved and moved to Paris to “become an artist”, failed to learn French, and in the ‘60s returned to England and opened a nightclub. That venture failed, and an 18-month move to the Canary Islands further depleted his funds. In the late 1960s he was back in England again and in a darkroom job with Ted Hart. Rowlinson noticed that photographers were no longer printing their own work: the era of the master printer was coming and Rowlinson was placed to be among the first of them.
Bill began to print for groups of commercial photographers, initially with the Seddon Group, and it was then his career began to flourish. When the business folded, he bought up the equipment and set up on his own in Belgravia, continuing to print for commercial photographers. It was then he began to print for Sarah Moon and his reputation was established, spread by word of mouth. Photographers began to entrust him with their ‘precious’ work and advertising agencies looked to him when they were after something ‘special’.
It was an advertising shot – for Newcastle Brown Ale, by photographer Derek Coutts – that landed Rowlinson his first Ilford Printer of the Year Award in 1975. The Ilford Photographic Awards were to run for 25 years from 1968 and were unique in giving the printer equal billing with the photographer and the same prize money – £1000 went a long way back then. Bill was to feature regularly in the Awards and became close to Ilford. Among the legion of big names whose work he crafted, he was to print for Bill Brandt, whose eyesight was failing in his later years.
Bill Rowlinson was an extrovert among an elite group of individuals who spent too much time, on their own, in the dark. He was a regular at gallery openings, with his increasingly wild and wayward hair, sometimes tied back, and a bottle of scotch secreted about his person because he couldn’t stand the free wine. If you needed to contact him by phone you knew not to call before noon: he would be asleep, having worked through the night, fuelled by inspiration and occasional visits to that bottle.
Rowlinson’s career hit the buffers around 10 years ago when he was diagnosed with cancer and told he had not long to live. In a typically defiant act he hosted his own wake at a pub around the corner from Process Supplies in Mount Pleasant, lording it over proceedings from a comfortable seat, resplendent in bandana, while the party spilled out onto the pavement. With his demise imminent, he gave pretty much everything away, even his cat. So it was little comfort to him that, in the event, he wasn’t to die. He rather disappeared from view, resurfacing only rarely as a judge in some photography award or other; it became commonplace at gatherings to be asked whether Bill was still ‘with us’.
Bill was a friend and mentor to a host of the London-based printers, in particular the younger generation coming to prominence around 20 years ago. A book of his work was planned, but sadly never saw the light of day. This was a great disappointment to him and marked the ending of the creative relationship with the intended author. Now it is too late.
Fleets Street’s darkrooms are all gone, and now the specialist black and white master printers, among whom he shone, are as rare as hen’s teeth. Bill Rowlinson was every bit as rare as that, and the few that remain were there today to wave him off.
