Norman Cope obituary

My father, Norman Cope, who has died aged 90, was well known in Leicester as a portrait and wedding photographer and as the chief technician at the Lens Media Centre at the city’s De Montfort University. Norman was also a popular figure in lawn bowls in the county.

Born in Leicester, he was the son of Dorothy (nee Arnold), who worked in a garment factory, and William Cope, who painted trams for Leicester city council. Norman attended Narborough Road school, but left at the age of 13 and began his career in the same year. Dorothy had managed to acquire a secondhand camera and tripod for him – and had billed him as “Leicester’s Child Photographer” in a small ad in the Leicester Mercury.

Norman worked for the Leicester Photo Company and, after national service in an RAF photographic unit, for English Electric for 10 years. In the mid-1960s, he opened Studio Cope, on the corner of Welford Road in the city. He took thousands of wedding photographs and portraits, processing and printing the black-and-white images himself.

In 1980, Norman started work as the chief photography technician at Leicester Polytechnic. He set up a new photography unit and documented the transition, in 1992, of the polytechnic into De Montfort University. He officially retired in 1994, but carried on taking photographs on cruise ships. He continued to work for De Montfort University, too, taking thousands of pictures of graduates every summer.

He was regarded as a considerable figure in the world of lawn bowls and was devoted to Narborough bowls club, where he was twice president and became an honorary life member. He was also an honorary life member of the Leicestershire Bowling Association, past president of the Leicestershire Indoor Bowling Association and Carlton indoor bowling club, and past chairman of the Leicester and district league.

Norman’s legacy is the continuous exhibition of his photographs on thousands of walls, mantelpieces, the tops of pianos, in albums and, like his own archive, stuffed into shoeboxes. His photographs have clarity, balance and an attention to detail; he was a master of his craft.

Both of Norman’s marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his sons, Brian and me, from his first marriage.