From the archives · 1936–2006
A look back at the people, pictures and shared curiosity behind the Saskatoon Camera Club’s 70th anniversary.
In its 2006–2007 anniversary edition, The Viewfinder preserved much more than a list of dates. It recorded how a photography club became a community—and how that community kept learning as photography changed.
Cover photograph: Jeff O’Brien.
Twenty years before our 90th anniversary, the club paused to look at the photographs—and the friendships—it had made along the way. The resulting special edition of The Viewfinder brought together archival research, members’ recollections, photographs, competition traditions and a record of the anniversary season.
We were still called the Saskatoon Camera Club. Meetings took place at the Mendel Art Gallery, and film and digital photography sat side by side in the club’s activities. Reading the publication today, the equipment can feel distant. The reasons people came together feel very familiar.
A meeting that started seventy years of photography
Club archivist Vern Sanders traced the beginning to September 23, 1936. Thirty men and one woman gathered in the Board of Trade office. Austin M. McNair, a StarPhoenix employee, chaired the meeting and became the first president. Helga Christensen was elected secretary and E. L. Pendlebury treasurer.
The entrance fee was one dollar, and annual membership cost another dollar. By 1938, the group had grown to 72 members. Its early years centred on making, judging and exhibiting black-and-white prints, with print exchanges connecting Saskatoon photographers to clubs in other western cities.
Finding a place to meet—and a place to work—was part of the story. After years at Nutana Collegiate, the club rented quarters with a darkroom in the Ross Block on Third Avenue. In 1944 it joined the Art Association and Archaeology Society to form the Saskatoon Art Centre. Later came a long relationship with the Mendel Art Gallery.
When the club itself became an exhibition
The 70th anniversary coincided with Saskatoon’s centennial. In 2006, the Mendel’s Naked City series concluded with Photographic Pleasures: A 70-Year Snapshot of the Saskatoon Camera Club.
The exhibition gathered photographs, invitations, newsletters, trophies, camera equipment and other memorabilia. Historical member photographs from the gallery’s permanent collection appeared alongside a DVD presentation of more recent work. The accompanying introduction, by Alexandra Badzak and Terry Graf, placed the club within Saskatoon’s artistic and cultural life; the historical account drew on Sanders’ archival research.
The anniversary season also included Courtney Milne’s Seeing With New Eyes workshop. Messages from then-Premier Lorne Calvert and then-Mayor Donald J. Atchison, preserved in the publication, recognized the club’s contribution to its community.
The friendships behind the photographs
Michelle Lane’s interviews with life members bring the history down to a human scale. Members described helpful people, lasting friendships, guest speakers and the encouragement to keep improving. Christopher and Jeannette Dean remembered other members giving up Sunday after Sunday to teach black-and-white developing and printing in the Mendel darkroom.
For Pat Derbowka, early recognition provided a memorable nudge: she recalled earning three ribbons in her first Photographer’s Choice clinic. Emily Schindel remembered the welcoming people at the Christmas party she attended in December 1986. These were different entry points into the same kind of community—one where sharing a photograph could lead to a conversation, a lesson and a reason to return.
“Learn from other members, enter clinics and become involved in running the club.”Dennis Harley, interviewed by Michelle Lane in The Viewfinder, printed page 15
Outings, critiques and friendly competition
The publication’s account of the Summer Fun Group captures the value of simply going out together. Nan Archibald organized the group in 1982. Pat Derbowka’s anniversary contribution described its later revival, with evening, day and weekend outings giving members time to explore, make friends and share photographic skills.
The annual Transparency Battle connected clubs across Saskatchewan. Emily Schindel and Vern Sanders traced the first contest to March 1970, when the Kindersley and Wes-Cen clubs joined Saskatoon. Each club presented a set of eight slides. A. Clare Hume later made and donated a trophy, first awarded in 1981.
In 2006, ten Saskatchewan clubs entered 80 slides, and Northern Image Photographers of Prince Albert won the trophy. The gathering was as much a chance to visit and learn from the judges’ comments as it was a competition.
Within the club, clinics—the historical name used in the publication for these image-review sessions—gave newer and experienced photographers constructive feedback. Themes, outings and competitions supplied a continuing invitation to look more closely and try something new.
Learning to see in a digital age
The anniversary edition records a transition in progress. A committee began studying digital photography in 2002, and Henry Schnell’s Review of the Digital Category followed in 2003. On March 15, 2005, members approved constitutional and bylaw changes allowing digital categories in clinics and competitions.
By the anniversary account, digital prints entered in clinics substantially outnumbered those produced from film. Yet members’ interviews show a range of responses: some loved their film cameras, while others were learning digital techniques and Photoshop. The 2006–2007 executive even listed separate film and digital judging-and-awards chairs—Scott Prokop and Wayne Cooper.
This was an expansion of the club’s ways of making photographs. Losing the Mendel darkroom in 1986 had not ended film photography; the publication makes clear that film and digital continued together years later.
Keeping the story for the next generation
The anniversary book was itself part of a long publishing tradition. The club issued The Bulletin in 1953, a short mimeographed newsletter. A single-issue Viewfinder appeared in 1973; Sanders began producing another magazine-style publication under that name in January 1977.
Preservation extended beyond newsletters. The club established a librarian/archivist position in 1961, organized surviving records in 1979–1980, and authorized a slide bank in 1999 to preserve copies of outstanding member work. The 70th anniversary edition turned those accumulated records into a story people could share.
In 2026, as the Saskatoon Photography Club marks 90 years, that story is still recognizable. Cameras, meeting places and ways of displaying images change. Members still learn by making photographs, discussing them and spending time with others who care about the craft.