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The University of Arizona Libraries has made Homer L. Shantz's United States and African photos available online.

By La Monica Everett-Haynes, University Communications
November 12, 2008

Homer L. Shantz, the 10th president of The University of Arizona, spent nearly six decades traveling the world and taking photographs that documented agriculture, livelihoods, waterscapes and landscapes.

The UA Libraries collaborated with the Arizona Herbarium to complete a digital collection of Shantz's work. The collection of nearly 7,000 photographs is now available through the University's Institutional Repository at the UA Libraries.

The database will help botanists, ecologists, African studies researchers and other scholars with their work and provide the general public a glimpse of the world Shantz explored, said Paula Wolfe, the UA's fine arts and architecture librarian.

"He would take photos over and over again to show the ecological studies of plants and changes in the environment," Wolfe said.

Shantz, considered one of the nation's foremost botanists, served as the UA president from 1928 to 1936.

He traveled widely in Africa and the southwest and western regions of the United States and took thousands of photographs along the way. His Four Corners collection of photographs was taken in 1919 and 1920 in a project backed by the Smithsonian Institution.

Shantz captured images of baseball games, social gatherings, alkali soil in Nevada, and locals diving for coins in the ocean in Cape Verde off the western coast of Africa at the advent of the 20th century.

Many of his images reveal views of plants, plains and desert lands – areas seemingly desolate and isolated if not for the vegetation, in some areas, and plush with greenery in others. In all, much of his work shows a world that predates massive urbanization.

Some images appear raw and smoky, containing curious juxtapositions and others require a squint to see humans and vehicles in the midst of a vast and wide unadulterated and seemingly unchanged landscape.

But Shantz also got up close to some of his subjects, resulting in detailed works that canvass parts of California, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Cape Verde's Sao Vicente, the Congo and other areas.

The University Libraries began the project more than six years ago to provide greater access to Shantz’s photo collection, Wolfe said.

The collection is unique in that Shantz took multiple photos of the same place over time because he was interested in photographic documentation of vegetation change.

That documentation means it’s possible for researchers to survey the photos for evidence of changes in plant density or plant type.

Shantz also carried keepsake journals with details and records of his photographs and of his trips.

Shantz was truly a pioneer in recording vegetation changes and considering the association between plants and soil and he started a line of research that will last for centuries, Phil Jenkins, a curatorial specialist at the UA Herbarium, noted in a release.

“We have people all over the campus that are trying to answer the questions that Shantz created,” Jenkins said.

Ecologists, land-use researchers and people interested in wildfire issues are just some of the people who make use of Shantz’s research, Jenkins added.