KAMLOOPS — A photo project undertaken more than three decades ago is finally going to be viewable by the public.
In August 1985, members of the Kamloops Photo Arts Club fanned out across the city to capture a day in the life of Kamloops.
The plan was to present a slideshow of the pictures at Expo ’86, but the 4,500 photographs never got the exposure the club was hoping for.
A few years ago, the president of the club began looking through the slides and realized their value.
“They were really good,” said past president Valerie Rampone, “and I thought that they belonged to the people of Kamloops, and it’s just a real time capsule of life in 1985. But nobody’s going to look at them as slides, so being president at the time I was able to convince the rest of the people that we should buy a slide scanner.”
The slides have been scanned and compiled into a digital slideshow, which will be shown to the public for the first time Wednesday night.
The entire project, including digital copies and original slides, will then be turned over to the Kamloops Museum and Archives.
“Basically it’s sat around much of the time in Joe’s basement, so it’s nice that it’s going to see the light, that it’s going to be preserved by the Archives, and that it will be available to the people of Kamloops,” Rampone said.
The public is invited to view the slideshow at the Henry Grube Education Centre tonight at 7 during the regular meeting of the Kamloops Photo Arts Club.
