Welcome to our New Patron, Bev Sinclair!

By Maartje Morton, WCC Secretary and PSNZ Treasurer

At the AGM earlier this year, Bev Sinclair was appointed PSNZ Patron following the retirement of John Boyd. Bev has been a PSNZ member and supporter for over 40 years, starting her involvement with it through her membership of the Whanganui Camera Club which she joined when she married and moved to Whanganui.

Some Whanganui Camera Club members were at the time heavily involved with PSNZ; people such as Derek Endersby, Arthur Bates, Vonnie Cave (also a former patron of the Society) were members of the PSNZ Council as well as leading members in the local club. When the editor of the PSNZ magazine NZ Camera resigned, Bev took over the role for eight years. During this time, NZ Camera twice won international recognition in the Photographic Society of America’s international photographic society magazine competition.

Bev has contributed to the organisation of regional and national PSNZ conventions through her leading role in the Whanganui Camera Club. She has been President of the club three times since 1974 and is currently the club’s Patron.

When PSNZ celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2003, Bev was invited to collate a comprehensive history of the Society to commemorate the occasion. It was published with that year’s PSNZ Members’ gallery of images. In 2019 Bev also wrote a history of the Whanganui Camera Club, Capturing the Light (the club’s early motto), for its 125th anniversary.

PSNZ was originally a society of clubs and only later included individual membership. Bev feels the PSNZ online magazine CameraTalk has been, like PSNZ print circles and the popular newer independent workshops, a valuable way of connecting individual members of PSNZ and sharing ideas for photography and club organisation.

She looks forward to the ongoing association with PSNZ in her role as Patron.

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