PSSA celebrates 70 years of service to photography
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On 24 July this year PSSA turned 70 and we decided to show the whole country the excellent quality of work produced by our members with this prestigious travelling print exhibition.
PSSA members responded magnificently to the invitation to submit entries for the exhibition. More than 200 members submitted 850 images, from which 70 images by 70 photographers were selected. It was extremely difficult to select fewer than 10% of the excellent submitted images. The main selection criteria were to show unique images that illustrate the wide variety of photographic genres favoured by PSSA photographers and their diversity of skills. Only one image per photographer who entered could be selected.
The PSSA 70th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition is now in Pretoria
The PSSA 70th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition is spending the Festive Season in Pretoria. AFO Fotografieklub celebrated PSSAs 70th Anniversary on Tuesday 11 December with the opening of the exhibition featuring 70 top images from 70 photographers at the NG Kerk Tygerpoort in Shere, Pretoria. This is the first leg of the Pretoria exhibition.
Due to the holidays the exhibition will unfortunately not be open permanently until 31 December and anybody who wishes to visit the exhibition before the end of 2024 are invited to contact AFO Fotografieklub chair Koos Marais on 072 200 5973. The exhibition will, however, be open every Sunday morning until the end of the year and from 6 January it will be open daily. In February the exhibition will be moving to the Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool (Affies) in Pretoria.
As the representative body of photographic clubs in Southern Africa, PSSA sets the norms and standards for competitions, and thus provides us a benchmark for measuring the quality of our photography, says Koos Marais, who opened the Pretoria exhibition. “The exhibition celebrates what has been achieved over the past 70 years and extends an invitation to thousands of photographers to join us.”
It is a visual portrayal of this consensus PSSA, with its 116 clubs, reached about the standard of photography in South Africa. “It is also a visible, almost tangible, testimony to the excellent levels of processing and manipulation (in some genres) in modern photography. Digital photography is inseparable from the almost daily changes and improvements in computer technology, creating more and more challenges for photographers. For these reasons PSSAs role as guardian of photographic norms and standards can never be underestimated,” says Koos. Photos by Ingrid Marais.
The first stops of the travelling exhibition in Mossel Bay, Parys and Potchefstroom were highly successful, attracting media coverage, visitor interest, new members for clubs, and making new friends for PSSA. There was also a mini-exhibition in Port Elizabeth during November.
Above (top two rows) are images taken by Mejandre Fourie of Mejandre Photography in Klerksdorp at the exhibition opening in the Snowflake Gallery in Potchefstroom during October. It was opened on October 9th by Southern Gauteng Regional Director Johan Brits and Snowflake Gallery curator Marie Bothma. The exhibition was visited by many members of the public in the newly restored Snowflake Gallery until October 22.
At the 2025 PSSA congress in Parys the 70th Anniversary Exhibition was very well received and visitors who completed the feedback form gave it very high enjoyment rating. The images in the middle row were taken by Sydney Truter of PE Camera Club of the exhibition in the foyer of the congress venue.
Eden Photographic Society in Mossel Bay (bottom row) launched the 70th Anniversary Exhibition during the Mossel Bay Music and Arts Festival during the last week of September. The exhibition was diligently promoted by club members Elizabeth Nicholson and Johan van Aarde on Facebook, WhatsApp and the media. It attracted plenty of interest – and gained the club new friends from photographers in the Garden Route. The photos of Eden club members with their prints on exhibition were taken by Johan van Aarde.
These exhibits attracted plenty of media coverage in the Mossel Bay Advertiser, Parys Gazette (three articles) and Vaalweekblad. Many images from the exhibitions were also posted to the PSSA Facebook page with 12 300 followers.
Most PSSA regions have committed to host the travelling exhibition. Please contact archives@pssa.co.za if you would like to be the next club or region to host the exhibition. If space is a problem, you are free to select only a few images for a mini-exhibition of 10-20 images.
You can see all the images on the exhibition in the book below, accompanied by a description from the photographers. This book is now also available in a soft cover and hard cover version at a generous discount offered by our Gold Sponsor Orms. To place an order for a printed version, please contact Trudi du Toit on trudi@sportstrader.co.za. Order printed books.
Click on the link to download the PSSA 70th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition 70 Images by 70 authors for PSSA 70th Anniversary.
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