PSSA celebrates 70 years of service to photography
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PSSA set benchmarks over 70 years Click here
International role of PSSA Click here
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On 24 July 2024 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 and Printwild, a PSSA Gold Sponsor printed and mounted the images at a discount.
The exhibition was introduced to the global photographic world with an article in the February 2025 issue of the FIAP magazine, FIAP News. Read it on the FIAP website here – scroll down to download the February 2025 issue to read the article on p66.
The PSSA 70th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition is now in Gauteng
The PSSA 70th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition spent the 2024 Festive Season and the beginning of the new year 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 was the first leg of the Pretoria exhibition. Due to the holidays the exhibition was open every Sunday morning until the end of the year and from 6 January it was open daily.
On February 12th, 2025, the exhibition was opened by PSSA Regional Director for Northern Gauteng, Francois Venter, at the Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool (Affies) in Pretoria. He highlighted the role played by PSSA in the art of photography.
A special feature of the exhibition was the exhibition of the work of Marnu van Zyl, the school’s photography club’s leading photographer. The school has a very active photography club. Not surprisingly, many of its members focus largely on sport photography. Phillip van Emmenis, art teacher and organiser of the photography club at Affies, said that he hopes the exhibition will show the boys what can be accomplished by the art of photography. The exhibition, staged in the foyer of the assembly hall, was open for visitors until 21 February.
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, said AFO Fotografieklub chairman, Koos Marais, when he opened the Tygerpoort 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. The photos above are 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 Mejandra Fourie of Mejandra 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 a 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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