Profile

Mandeville into fourth decade with Photography Unit

Photograhy Unit Manager David Mandeville in the studio. Photo courtesy of the Division of Audio Visual Services (DAVS)

By Wayne Eyre

Is there anyone on campus who has had dealings with more faculty and staff than David Mandeville?

As manager of the Photography Unit (DAVS), he’s been on the scene for 31 years to photograph countless news conferences, campus personnel, VIP visitors, construction sequences, campus scenes, and various special occasions.

Then there’s all the work he’s done with researchers and professors in the Health Sciences disciplines – the surgery-related and clinical photography needed for teaching, research projects, and diagnostic work that’s done by medical, dental, pharmaceutical, physiotherapy, nursing, and veterinary personnel.

"When my wife and I used to go grocery shopping with our two young children, they’d often complain about all the stops we’d make on meeting campus people in the supermarket."

He says roughly half the work of his five-person Photography Unit currently relates to "medical" photography. If the Unit gets a call from the operating room, one of the staff drops everything and goes there immediately.

"Whether the call for clinical or surgery work ends up taking 10 minutes or four hours, it gets first priority."

Mandeville was born and raised in Kingston, a suburb of London, England. After high school, he took an apprenticeship in medical photography through a program at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (f. 1123) that lasted two and a half years.

In 1969, a colleague saw an advertisement in the journal of the Institute of Medical and Biological Illustration for a veterinary medical photography position at the University of Saskatchewan, airfare paid.

Career opportunity tended to be limited at the time in England, so he applied for the job and got it – through Dr. Paul Greenough, DAVS, who had placed the ad.

Mandeville arrived here, alone, in the fall of 1969. He was 22.

He says the cold weather, the big sky, and the long distances between centres did constitute a culture shock.

"But the standard of living was higher here. Housing and apartments were better. Bank loans were easier. It was unusual for one not to have a car. So I stayed and found it fairly easy to fit in."

In 1969, the DAVS photography unit was located in Kirk Hall, but moved to the new Education Building in the summer of 1970.

In 1975, Medical Photography, previously a department of the College of Medicine, became part of DAVS, although it maintained its original lab facilities in the Health Sciences Building. In 1980, Medical Photography moved to its current location on the sixth floor of the [Royal] University Hospital.

In recent years, Mandeville says, such digital technology advances as scanners, data projectors, and PowerPoint software have reduced demand for the services of the Photography Unit. As a result, the Unit is considering new directions and restructuring to cope with the do-it-yourself technologies now available to individuals.

He says there’s also been a big shift to digital imaging, but he believes that there will always be a role for conventional photography.

"Digital imaging is certainly having an impact on conventional photography, but I see a marriage of the two down the line. For example, 50 years from now, it’s very possible that a computer of the day will not be able to read a CD-ROM made now. Whereas a conventional negative will always be a ‘human readable’ as they say in the profession."

Because of advancing technologies, Mandeville says archiving of documents has become a big concern. As a result, companies like Kodak are offering data-storage services on film, even as the Photographic Unit itself offers a microfilming service.

The Unit also produces slides from x-ray films and duplicate slides for faculty, does copy negatives and prints for University Archives, and processes a fair amount of black and white printing.

Mandeville says black and white seems to be making a resurgence in photographic art; is still best for showing DNA banding and various scientific techniques; and is used in many scientific journals because it’s less costly than color.

"So there’s still lots of scope for conventional photography," he comments.

He acknowledges that he’s pretty familiar with the word rush – he says he hears it pretty well every day – and notes that he and his team try their best to accommodate requests for rush work.

"In fact, we encourage clients who need some work done in a big rush to contact us first. I met someone last week who told me that he had a big rush job, but he didn’t think that we’d be able to do it so went somewhere else. We can’t provide 100 per cent service for everyone, but we do try to – or at least to act as a resource service provider for them."

He says that no one incident stands out as especially outstanding in his career on campus, "although our full coverage of the 1979 Diefenbaker funeral comes close."

But he does note one phenomenon: that there’s been a tendency for the recent presidents to have a higher public profile than they did earlier.

"I’ve worked under five presidents. Dr. Spinks I photographed once in his office. Dr. Begg I rarely saw. With Dr. Kristjanson the publicity level rose notably, especially with the campaign for the new Agriculture Building. George Ivany was very high profile. And it looks as if Peter MacKinnon is going to be the same.

"So I guess it’s a reflection of a change from an ivory tower position to one that’s more approachable and personable from the community’s point of view."

Mandeville says he still finds the job fun "most of the time," and so is leaving the matter of retirement open-ended.

Meanwhile, he’s much involved in the scouting movement and currently is deputy provincial commissioner for Scouts Canada, a movement that boasts a membership of about 7,000 youth and adults in Saskatchewan and some 21 million worldwide.

David and his wife RheaAnn’s son Geoffrey, a U of S graduate, is assistant manager of Tip Top Tailors in Saskatoon; their daughter Carla is currently in fourth-year Dentistry.