Page 7 - Cape-Camera-September-2022

Cape Camera September 2022

and Honorary life Membership in the 1970’s. He was also award-
ed Life Membership by the Pretoria Photographic Society.
In 2015, at the De Hoop Congress, CTPS awarded him a Honor-
ary Life Membership.
Detlef still has some of the negatives and prints he took with
the Box Brownie camera he received as a ten year old. In high
school he started developing his own films – a practice he kept
up well into the colour era – and at the University of Pietermar-
itzburg he also developed films for other people.
Detlef was five months old when the Basel family came to
South Africa from Germany before WW II. After growing up on
a farm in KwaZulu Natal and attending university, he started
working in 1960 as a science master at a Durban school, where
he promptly started a photographic club and set up a darkroom
used by the pupils during the day and by himself at night.
Detlef and Barbara Basel. Photo by Trudi du Toit He had always been interested in drama and during this time he
starred in a Passion Play in the Durban City Hall, where he was
Before that, he served on the committee of the Pretoria Pho- so grateful for the kind and capable way his make-up was done
tographic Society for 38 years, including three sessions of two by a girl named Barbara, that he asked her to marry him.
years as president. Their constitution set a limit on presidential They got married in Ndola (now part of Zambia) where Detlef
terms. In fact, four months after he joined in April 1967, he was was head of the science department at the school and in De-
elected president – in absentia. cember 2015 they celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary.
His unexpected election was prompted by the interest he had In 1965 they relocated to Pretoria – and yes, Detlef again started
shown in assisting beginners and new members in the club – a a photographic club at St Alban’s school where he headed the
natural interest after running photographic clubs at the schools science department. He taught there for 34 years.
where he had taught science for 40 years. Detlef had agreed to
serve on the committee, but was away from Pretoria when the In 1998 Detlef reached retirement age at the school, but, the
AGM was held where he was elected president. Museum of Science and Technology offered him a job. Barbara
was busy completing her doctorate in English at the University
Apart from the long years serving on the Pretoria society com- of Pretoria.
mittee, Detlef served on the PSSA board for 25 years as salon
director, and one year as vice-president during the late 1970’s. In 2005, when Detlef turned 70, they moved to Cape Town,
He was the Pretoria club salon director when the PSSA asked where they had bought a retirement home in 1993.
him to join the board. Detlef was barely in Cape Town, before the Cape Town MTN Sci-
ence Centre asked to make use of his services. He does a lot of
He not only judged quite a few salons in Pretoria, but he also got
about 300 salon acceptances to become a 4-Diamond worker in work in township schools, introducing the Grade 10, 11 and 12’s
both prints and slides. to the formal science experiments required by the curriculum
through a mobile science centre – a truck equipped with all the
During the time he served on the PSSA board, he was awarded science materials that the average township school lacks.
an APSSA (Associate of the PSSA) for service in the mid-1980’s

With Detlef is his wife Barbara and outgoing PSSA 2nd Vice-Pres- Martin Barber, Barbara Basel, Detlef Basel and Jill Sneesby. Photo
ident Martin Barber, who wll be succeeded by Geoff Feldon (not by Sydney Truter
present). Photo by Sydney Truter

Cape Town Photographic Society 7