History

Harry Truman was in the White House, Joe DiMaggio was playing centerfield for the pennant-winning New York Yankees, and Ezio Pinza had just opened in SOUTH PACIFIC on Broadway when a group of seven amateur photographers, meeting in a Caldwell classroom in October of 1949, began the work of organizing the West Essex Camera Club.Within a year another group, most of them students of helen Manzer’s Montclair Adult School photography class, organized the Montclair Camera Guild. They met in the homes of the members.

For almost 49 years the clubs ran on parallel tracks, with photography clubs mushrooming to eight in Essex County alone. Now, with the marriage of the West Essex and Montclair groups and their adoption of the name Essex Photo Club, the total number of clubs is down to four, with the new EPC by far the largest of them all.

Where once there were 35 participants in WECC black & white competitions, the emphasis gradually switched to color printing, to slides (the nature class was an even later addition), and to trade printing. Just several years ago, WECC became the first club in the country to offer competition to a new wave of photographers with a feel for standard-sized, unmounted prints. And now there is the enthusiasm generated by the intermingling of the two traditions.

Both clubs enjoyed rapid growth. By January 1950 WECC had 75 members paying dues of $1 per month (…it was 20 years before the dues were raised) and was meeting in the Red Cross building, first in Caldwell and then in Essex Fells. That association lasted for 30 years. After interim stays elsewhere, meetings have been held in the United Methodist Church of Verona since 1990. Interestingly, the Montclair club met for two periods in the United Methodist Church of Montclair, most recently from 1994 until the start of this year. Monthly competitions were features of both clubs from the start. An estimated 20,000 photographs (as many as 150 on some nights) were shown at WECC over the years. No estimates for Montclair are available but both clubs boasted photographers who won honors in international salons, state competitions, and had photographs on display in local galleries including the Montclair Art Museum.

Ringwood Manor was the destination of the first WECC field trip in 1950 and the site has been visited frequently ever since.

The annual Columbus weekend jaunts to Rockport, Mass. were a fixture for many years. However, for sheer activity the year 1972 stands out with field trips to the Kodak labs, three days in Vermont, Vernon Valley, Mystic Seaport, three days in Lancaster, Lake Mohonk, three days in Cape May, three days in Muhlenberg, The Circle Line, West Point and Waterloo.