NAC Member of the Moment
Denis Cahill

NAC’s Marketing and Membership committee is recognizing members of NAC with an initiative called NAC Member of the Moment. Three or four times a year, we’ll highlight an active member of our over 300-member-strong collective on our website and share something of who they are and what they do.

Our first Member of the Moment is Denis Cahill, long-time St.Catharines Standard photographer and hail fellow well met. Denis recently exhibited work in the Denis Tourbin Members’ Gallery showing a cross-section of his work from over thirty years of image-making. Denis had previously exhibited at Rodman Hall with a twenty year showcase of over 100 newspaper photos. Some of these were also included in the recent St.Catharines museum retrospective exhibit Niagara Through the Lens - The Shots that Set the Standard and accompanying book. Denis’s show at NAC allowed him to display a mix of his newspaper photography as well as shots he’s taken for his own pleasure and enjoyment. If you know Denis, and it seems few don’t, he’s an upbeat, lively character well connected to his community.

Denis was hired in 1965 as a budding newspaper photographer at the tender age of 19. He set aside his plans to go to Ryerson to hire on with the Standard. His journalistic interest was influenced by his father who had also worked at the paper at one time. Essentially self-taught, he honed his skills intuitively and with guidance from Don Sinclair, then the Standard’s chief photographer. He admits he was a bit of an ambulance chaser in pursuit of a great shot but he cut his teeth on everyday events, from music festivals to church bazaars.

He received early recognition with a Western Ontario Newspaper Award (WONA) honourable mention in 1966 for coverage of a night-time highway accident. He received another WONA (runner up) in 1980 for a humorous shot of then Federal Minister of Agriculture Eugene Whelan shaking hands with a farm worker, hand extended from inside a wine vat. His most memorable award was his Canadian Press Sports Photo of the Year in 1986.

Denis also worked as camera man in the 1970s, covering local events for charities or news items in the region for TV broadcast in Toronto and Buffalo, but that ended in the 1980s with the switch from film to video.

Denis retired as Chief Photographer of the Standard in January 2009. Not one to slow down, he continues to work as one of the area’s most sought after freelance photographers.