Extract from ABC News
Building the Denmark to Nornalup railway line. Bert Saw had a painter's eye for composition. (Supplied: Bert Saw)
The early days of settlement, young soldiers heading off to war and one of WA's first train lines being built are just some of the highly prized photos captured by one of Australia's earliest photographers.
At the turn of the 20th century, Albany-born Bert Saw documented, in incredibly rare and beautiful detail, the life and experience of those living on the state's rugged south coast.
Despite having no formal training, the keen-eyed photographer took hundreds of photos on a 12-kilogram glass plate camera believed to have been made in Cheapside, England in the 1890s.
Bert Saw documented the early white settlers, sometimes working, and sometimes out on the rivers in boats, in Denmark and Nornalup circa 1920s. (Supplied: Bert Saw)
Denmark Historical Society Treasurer Grant Peake said the camera, considered "portable and cutting-edge" at the time, required great skill to use, particularly in the rough and rugged southern landscape.
"He commenced, we believe, photographic work in about 1908 in the Nornalup area and did a lot of work around Denmark, Albany and further regions in the Great Southern," he said.
"It's not lightweight by any means, and if he was going through the bush, which he would have been, it would have been cumbersome."
Grant Peake with Bert Saw's glass plate camera. (ABC Great Southern: Mark Bennett)
Bert Saw at a road-building camp near Nornalup, loaded with his camera, tomahawk and rifle. Date unknown but most likely in the 1920s. (Supplied: Denmark Historical Society/Bert Saw)
Despite the limitations of the technology at the time, Mr Peake said the photos were of a high standard.
"Compared to modern cameras, the portable camera we talk of now is completely unique… but the work he produced from this camera is highly prized," he said.
"He was very skilled; he just knew exactly what he was going to take."
Lucky break sparked photography
Chair of the Denmark Historical Society Bev McGuiness said that if not for a stroke of providence, Saw's work may never have even existed.
Bev McGuinness with the album of Bert Saw's photographs. (ABC Great Southern: Mark Bennett)
"The story we've heard is he was watching the soldiers go onto the boat in Albany for the Boer War and was fascinated by the people taking photographs," she said.
"We suspect that maybe one of the photographers said, 'Here, you have a go at this,' and that got him hooked."
One of Bert Saw's earliest images circa 1900 as troops prepare to leave Albany for the Boer War. (Supplied: Denmark Historical Society/Bert Saw)
Over five decades, Saw captured more than 600 images on his glass plate camera, many of which are just now coming to light.
Before he died, his collection of images was left to his nephew, Geoff Saw, who has gifted the collection to the Denmark Historical Society, to be shared with the community.
Mr Saw, who celebrated his 97th birthday last week, still remembers visiting with his uncle in the small shingle hut he built in Bow River, which doubled as his photography lab.
Geoff Saw in the slab hut he shared with his uncle as a child in the 1930s. The hut remains partly intact on the banks of the Bow River. (ABC Great Southern: Mark Bennett)
Saw created his own emulsion fluid to coat the glass plates with silver nitrate in the hut, where he printed many of the 600 images that have emerged.
"It brings back a lot of memories,"he said.
"Old Uncle Bert and his Uncle Will lived in [the hut], and then [again] when they were building the house in about 1918."
Bert Saw reads the Western Mail at his hut near the Bow River. (Supplied: Geoff Saw)
Celebrated photographer
Despite his modest and rural beginnings, Saw's work has been increasingly celebrated since his death.
Denmark Historical Society's Ross McGuinness said as more of Saw's work came to light, the full extent of his impact on the state's history was becoming known.
"The quality of Bert's plates is such that Joanna Sassoon wrote a book about Ernest Lund Mitchell, who was, or acted as, a state photographer during Bert's period," he said.
Ross McGuinness holds one of the 600 glass plate negatives taken by Bert Saw. (ABC Great Southern: Mark Bennett)
"She featured an image which we've discovered is actually a Bert image because we have the glass plate of that particular one.
"For Bert to be put up there with a professional photographer of the period and his work held up as being a very excellent example shows the standard of his work in general."
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