Richard Woldendorp

Born in Utrecht in The Netherlands and brought up by his mother, a sole parent, in Leeuwarden, from 1934 Richard Woldendorp was educated at boarding school in Berkelouw and studied design in his teen years before joining the army at nineteen.

Impressed with the creative potential of photography, he visited galleries in Holland to see work of contemporary practitioners Henri Cartier-Bresson and W. Eugene Smith who used 35mm film cameras.

Accordingly, in the late 1950s, he too purchased a Leica, but desiring better resolution, traded that for medium-format Pentacon single lens reflex (SLR) and Rolleiflex square format cameras.

[2] In Sydney Woldendorp met Max Dupain and David Moore whose example encouraged him to show his work to government departments and magazine publishers, before recognising that the largely undocumented cultural landscape of the west and its resources boom were attractive subject matter to them, so returned to WA.

In 1979 Woldendorp and his wife Lyn established the first picture agency in Western Australia; Photo Index, a success which over twenty years provided freedom to travel and to make work with artistic integrity.