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VISIONS: Photographing Benalla and Beyond

An exhibition celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Benalla Camera Club at the Benalla Art Gallery  October 15 – December 8 2024

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VISIONS instalation

VISIONS montage

VISIONS image boxes

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In early 2024 we were invited by the Benalla Camera Club to participate on the organising team of an exhibition that celebrated the Club’s 70^th anniversary of its founding in 1954. From October to December this year the club’s showcase was to be held in the Simpson Gallery space of the Benalla Art Gallery. As members of the club, we were excited to be able to contribute to the project through our knowledge and experience of exhibition production.

The team included artist Kym Stubbs, digital designer and technician Mike O’Connor, Club Treasurer and club historian Judy Barry and the two of us. At the beginning of the project the team met with Benalla Art Gallery Director Eric Nash to discuss the gallery’s requirements and process for the exhibition. Meetings of the committee, and at times included Eric, continued at regular intervals throughout the project.

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The Team – Benalla Camera Club VISIONS exhibition

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Early in the project we presented a suggested layout that included a large image mosaic around 7 metres long for one wall, a large projected image screen, a showcase of equipment and a timeline. To make for a dynamic experience for viewers in the centre space of the gallery, team member Kym suggested 3D sculptural collections of boxes with images affixed to them.

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Proposal and final install of Visions Exhibition

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The key theme was to celebrate the club’s current membership while highlighting references to, and stories from, the past 70 years. Concepts and ideas were refined and the exhibition gradually took shape to be an innovative and contemporary display. Special challenges were set for Mike experimenting methods for ganging images together for the montage mural and the printing of images for the boxes. Kym experimented with sizes and arrangements for the boxes and their placement in the gallery space. She also sourced a local manufacturer to make the boxes and then, with fellow club member Helen Repacholi, painted and prepared the boxes. The Gallery already had engaged a local master printer Marty Burke Signs for the adhesive backed vinyl wall mural and other didactic panels. Apart from general project coordination our task was to collate and prepare a timeline from information supplied by the club historian Judy.

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A section of the Visions montage

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Images by current club members were to be presented in the exhibition in many formats. The largest was a photographic montage 8 metres long featuring 44 images. A further 80 images appear on Kym Stubbs’ boxes with around 44 images, and an early movie, in digital projection slide show – all of which were collected and assembled by Mike O’Connor. Kym and Mike collaborated on the selection of image sets for the boxes.

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THE INSTALL

In the days before the opening the camera club team members along with Eric and the Gallery team worked to install the exhibition.

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Installing the montage with Eric, Fleur and Doug

Kym in the installation – Benalla Art Gallery

Kym and Vicky in the install

Mike installing photos on the boxes

In the installation – Benalla Art Gallery

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THE OPENING

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The exhibition was opened on October 18, 2024 by the club Vice President Noel Baumgarten, with other speeches by Dom Testoni CEO Benalla Rural City Council, and Eric Nash Director of the Benalla Art Gallery.

In his introductory remarks at the opening Gallery Director Eric was to make the following comments –

Exhibitions such as this are incredibly important as they speak directly to the diversity and vibrancy of Benalla’s artistic community; those who pursue their artform with passion and dedication. In doing so these creative members of our community are not only benefitting personally, but they are enriching our entire region. And what an incredible thing that the Benalla Camera Club has been doing this for our community for 70 years! A round of applause please everyone on an incredible milestone.

And I think it’s wonderful within this exhibition that we can not only celebrate some stunning images by current members, but also through the illustrated timelines gain an appreciation of the full scale of those changes; stretching back to 1954 when the Club staged competitions centered on Kodachrome film, and 16, 8 and 35mm black and white film, to an adoption in recent years of the online platform MyPhotoClub for the administration, judging, and presentation of photo competitions.

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THE TIMELINE EXHIBITION COMPONENT

Our task was to resolve the Timeline component of the exhibition. We worked to find ways to incorporate the great volume of text material collated by Judy that had been sourced from local newspaper clippings from the Benalla Ensign and club reports. We selected three time periods to generally represent the eras of photographic practice over the 70 years: 1954–1969, 1970–1999 and 2000–2024. To present the information from each era in a visually interesting way we fed the gathered texts relating to that period into a ‘word cloud’ app. The resulting graphic created by the app was a circular design where the size of each word was determined by the number of times it appeared in the text.

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Timeline word cloud for 1970-1999

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An additional element to the Timeline was a succinct history of photography over the 70 years highlighting changes and transitions in technology and the change from analogue (film) to digital capture and output. Here’s a sample of this text from 1970-1999.

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“TOWARDS A PHOTOGRAPHIC TIMELINE FROM THE 1970s to the 1990s – A Brief Commentary

ART MOVEMENTS AND APPROACHES TO MAKING PHOTOGRAPHS: Pictorialism (popular in camera clubs), Modernism and Post-Modernism, Documentary and Art – the foundation of the Australian Centre for Photography

PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGING TECHNOLOGY: Analogue along with digital technology development of digital imaging and output in the 1990s

IMAGING DEVICES:  Analogue camera brands with new digital still and movie cameras in the 1990s including Kodak, Sigma, Sony, Samsung, Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Fuji

CAPTURE MATERIALS: Analogue materials persisted although in the late 1990s digital emerged as the dominant technology. Flatbed and film scanners created opportunities to bring analogue materials into the digital space

PRESENTATION TECHNOLOGIES: Prints, projectors for slides and movies were gradually replaced by digital projectors with screens and speakers

SPECIALISED TECHNOLOGY: Darkrooms became redundant and were replaced by computers and digital imaging programs like Adobe Photoshop. Inkjet printing with desktop devices began to replace professional laboratories. In the 1990s the Internet became the medium for sharing and disseminating digital files”.

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Benalla Camera Club Timeline 1954-1979

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An additional Timeline element were small quotes from the newspapers that describe the activities of the club at that time …

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(CLICK ON EACH TEXT BLOCK TO ENLARGE)

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IN CONCLUSION

It was exciting to be part of the team that created this innovative presentation of the Benalla Camera Club. Importantly the exhibition presents the visual record in many photographic styles from artistic representation to documentary, and abstract to natural history recording. As photography enthusiasts the club members are a part of a world-wide community. Through personal expression and creativity, they provide visual statements of the times in which they lived and stories of their community. Their manifesto states:

“Today our club continues to explore expanding opportunities for photography. As well as creating images of the world around us, we pursue a range of techniques and photo-making experiments to capture the world beyond the scope of the human eye. We can be found with camera in hand at every community occasion. Through our regular club competitions, activities and excursions, we work to share our knowledge, skills and experience of the art and craft of photography with the wider community.  (From the Gallery didactic)

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Congratulations Benalla Camera Club and their members on their 70 years of operation  –  we look forward to seeing the Club thrive in the next 70 …

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Victoria Cooper+Doug Spowart

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More Information About the Benalla Camera Club

The Benalla Camera Club is a local club, with current membership of approximately 30 active photographers. The Club meets monthly for photo competitions, workshops, activities and outings. Anyone interested in photography is welcome to attend meetings and learn more about the Club, which caters to all photographers from beginner to advanced. To learn more or become involved, visit: www.benalla.myphotoclub.com.au

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