Club Spotlight _ Bishop Aukland PS

      Bishop Auckland Photographic Society held an Exhibition of Prints to celebrate 100 years of the society.

      The Exhibition was held at The Discovery Centre, 29 Market Place. The Exhibition was opened by Mrs J H Black, ARPS, APAGB, President of the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain. The opening of the exhibition was attended by Mr Alan Porrett, President of the NCPF and by guests from around the region, as well as their own photographers. The prints came from their archives and showed typical work produced by their members throughout the club's history and by their current members. Each member of the Bishop Auckland Society was allowed to submit one print to the Exhibition.

      The prints were very well displayed. Everyone enjoyed wandering around looking at the prints and discussing them. The Discovery Centre was one of the venues where Bishop Auckland used to meet, they hired a first floor room for their meetings. The building itself was originally the home of one of their previous members at the turn of the last century.

      The Society produced an excellent book and CD entitled "100 Not Out" to celebrate their century of club activities, this was entirely the work of society members.

      In the book there is a list of members of the society since it was formed. The book starts with the formation of the camera club following an advert placed in the local paper. Bishop Auckland's first President was Mr Ernest Lingford - of Lingford's Baking Powder. Other members were bankers, schoolmasters or shop owners.

      One of their Vice President's (of which there were about three) was Mr William D Dent who was the BAPS member who attended the meeting at the Literary and Philosophical Society in Neville Street, Newcastle when the Northern Counties Photographic Society was formed on 27 November 1901. In fact Bishop Auckland is the only club to have continuous membership of the NCPF.

      By 1906 Bishop Auckland had moved to 11 Silver Street to hold their photographic meetings, in this building they had a dark room for use by their members. It is believed that 11 Silver Street is now known as 22 King Street. Bishop Auckland now meet at the Lightfoot Centre.

      The book is a fascinating collection of very interesting facts, one fact, probably not generally realised is that film was not rationed during the second world war and although in short supply it was available to photographers.

      The book reviews the different cameras in use then and now, the fact that black and white photography was the only photography, whereas now we have colour slides and prints and even computers. Naturally there have been numerous changes during the century.

      During the 1970s seven members of the photographic society produced several audio visual presentations under the name of Orion North, they were expensive to produce both in time and money. Symphony in Colour was their first show and Sir George Pollock (one of the pioneers of "dissolve photography") complemented the society by saying in a journal that it was probably the most ambitious performance by any society in the country. Another audio visual presentation "Eastward to the Sea" was shown to audiences in 1976 and the Northern Echo described the beginning of the show as follows:- "On the screen, shots of rain and river fade into a view of Cow Green dam on the Tees, and the sound effects become dramatic. A burst of Sibelius and then across the 24 feet screen spreads a panorama of the Tees around High Force. The scene is set for seventy minutes of rich photography, the extraordinary output of Orion North".

Prepared from information supplied by Arnold C Lee.