Pat Whitehouse, talented wife of our member Harold, will be remembered with
affection by many members of the BBS, and many more who never met her must
have admired her stereoscopic slides of bryophytes at BBS Autumn Meetings.

There is an account of a projection session she gave at the Birmingham meeting in
September 1984, in B.B.S. Bulletin, no. 45. p. 10 (February 1985).

Pat was a scientist by training. She graduated in physiology at Cambridge, and obtained her Ph.D for research in endocrinology at the Biochemistry Department of University College, London. She completed a full medical course at St Thomas's Hospital, where she was one of the first two women students. But it was as a photographer that she won wide recognition and acclaim. I remember back in the 1950s, the camera with which she took photographs of their two daughters being used for some first essays at stereo pairs. She went on to become a leading exponent of stereoscopic photography, and travelled widely giving stereoscopic audio-visual shows, which held packed audiences spellbound. Her joyful and beautiful sequence of nestling birds and flowers to the 'Hallelujah Chorus' was a delight and deservedly celebrated. Her shows altered gradually over the years, and old subjects were replaced by newcorners of their Cambridge garden, travel sequences, bumblebees and other insects on Echium in the Suffolk Breckland -these were only a few.

Many photographers have found stereoscopy limiting. The apparent ease of Pat's
presentations concealed much originality and technical ingenuity, and many hours of devoted work. She had a thorough grasp of the theoretical background of stereo and close-up photography, and it was with that knowledge that she would now and again attempt, and achieve, what conventional wisdom regarded as impossible. She virtually created her own artistic medium, and the hardware necessary to work in it.

The few commercially available stereo cameras could only tackle subjects at
distances of a metre or more, so, for close-up work, Pat built her own. 'Baby Bertha ..... grew out of bits and pieces of old cameras, bellows, camera body, roll film holder, etc. The shutter ..... an old Thornton-Picard blind ..... [was] cocked by
pulling a string and fired by a cable release.' To get the optical axes of two
government-surplus lenses close enough together for really close-up work she had to cut a slice off each - a sheet of abrasive paper kept beside the cooker enabled her to stir a saucepan with one hand and grind a lens with the other!

Further cameras followed, and at the time of her death, in 1988, she was working on a fifth. Designed especially for extreme close-ups of bryophytes, it records on film about one centimetre cubed of space, and in Harold's hands it has produced some remarkable results.

Pat joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1941, and gained its Fellowship in
1961 for a set of close-up stereo photographs of mosses. She joined the Stereoscopic Society in 1962, later becoming its president. In 1972 the RPS accorded her the high distinction of its Hood Medal. She served on the Council of the RPS for a number of years and became an Honorary Fellow of the society in 1986. The fame of her work led to invitations to give presentations in the USA, and on the Continent, as well as to innumerable audiences in Britain. Anyone who attended one of her shows must surely have been aware not only of its technical and artistic mastery, but also of the magical ingredient which came from her own quiet and unassuming but intense presence. She will be sadly missed.