When the New Year rings in it will trigger the start of an ambitious year-long photography project for the Whanganui Camera Club (WCC) – photographing daily life in our city throughout the whole of 2025.

The objective is to capture images throughout the year of people and scenes from everyday life and from local events in settings that are recognisably “Whanganui”, says club president John Smart.

“We expect club members will be out and about virtually every day during 2025, photographing the people, activities and places that make Whanganui such a vibrant and special place to live.”

The project is being carried out in collaboration with the Whanganui Regional Museum, and will culminate in an exhibition of selected works at the Museum in 2026.

“People were fascinated by our recent exhibitions of images by Whanganui photographer William James Harding and West Coast miner Joseph Divis, and the details they revealed about ordinary folk and how they lived,” says Museum director Bronwyn Labrum. “These images showed how vital it is to have someone recording daily life as it actually happens, capturing those moments for posterity that can never be recreated. With this project, people 100 years (and more) in the future will be able to look back and see how we their forebears lived our lives.”

The aim of Snapshots of Whanganui 2025 is to capture the personality of the people and the city in 2025, covering as wide a cross-section of activities and environments as possible. These will be photographs taken “for the record” – candid, photojournalism-style images rather than posed – and most will be taken in public spaces. However WCC is obviously also keen to show Whanganui people at work as well as play, and is hoping companies, sports clubs, service organisations and the like will allow access to their premises.

“We really hope the people of Whanganui get behind this project – Let us know if you have an event we should cover or would be willing to provide access to your workplace or organisation,” says Smart.

 Snapshots of Whanganui 2025 will be the third public service project carried out by WCC in recent times, following the successful Domestic Heritage project in 2022 and this year’s Churches project.

“As a club we are always keen to contribute to our community and although it’s going to be a huge commitment we believe our team of over 30 participating photographers has the energy and the skills to make this a success. The Museum will have free access to the photos we take and they will select and curate a print exhibition to be displayed in the Museum for several months in 2026. It is likely we’ll have so many photos we won’t be able to print them all, so we’ll probably produce an audiovisual for display and also create a digital gallery of a wider range of images. We will work with the Museum to archive a selection of the image files.”

Participating club members will carry project identification and anyone who is photographed can opt out should they subsequently wish. In general children will only be photographed as part of a large group or event e.g. general shots of sports meetings

“We’re hoping that everyone gets into the spirit of this project and helps to make it a success,” says Smart. “If anyone has questions – and helpful ideas – they can contact me at president@whanganuicameraclub.org.nz.”