Isabel Smith joined the Banbury Camera Club in 1948, just one year after the club’s formation. In 1997 she was the first and only person to be awarded honorary life membership of the club.
A Woman’s World “Won the Blinkhorn Cup in Banbury Arts and Crafts Festival 1961. The judge was Mr John Saunders. 30 years later he asked Ken Collins if Mrs Smith was still photographing washing. She was!”
Third Man in Venice
This sinister character walked into the frame just as Isabel pressed the shutter – and made the picture! It was published in Amateur Photographer in 2001, along with other photos in the club’s portfolio submission.
Poppy
“My first exhibition print 1963.”
Poppy Bud “One of my last prints, shown in the club’s Fiftieth Anniversary exhibition in FStop in 1997, before I was overtaken by technology!”
Self-Portrait in the Kitchen
No doubt this was taken for a club competition with the subject “Self-Portrait”. It was shown at the club’s exhibition in the Banbury Museum in 1988.
Isabel died on 25 June, 2006, aged 88 years, after a long illness. A section of the annual exhibition is in memory of her. Nobody did more to keep the club going in the first fifty years of its existence; indeed, without Isabel’s dedication through difficult patches it is doubtful if the club would still be in existence today. But we also remember a very fine photographer, whose enthusiasm was an example to us all. Her daughter Parinita has kindly lent a few of Isabel’s photos for this exhibition, and we have included in this leaflet the comments which Isabel attached to the back of the prints.
