About

The original version of Niler can be found here: www.niler.com/contentspage.html.

Questions regarding Nile Root’s photography can be directed to Abby Root at [abbyr314 at gmail dot com].

Nile Root, Professor Emeritus, College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology, has been active in the field of biocommunications for over 45 years. He is a Registered Biological Photographer (RBP), a Fellow of the Biological Photographic Association (FBPA) and a Schmidt Laureate, the highest honor awarded by the BPA – now renamed the BioCommunications Association, (BCA). He directed the RIT program in Biocommunications for over 12 years. He retired in 1986. While at RIT he was also the director of a government grant (1973-77) for development of a baccalaureate degree in the field of biocommunications. In 1986 Nile received the Award for Outstanding Teaching at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Nile served as a Photographer’s Mate in the U. S. Navy in World War ll. After his discharge, in 1946, he was employed by the U.S. Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT), in occupied West Germany as a microphotographer. He traveled throughout West Germany microfilming captured documents.

Since 1965 Nile has participated in nearly every exhibit of biological photography sponsored yearly by the BPA. He has received over 50 awards including 16 First Awards for his photographs. He has had several hundred biological photographs published in books, professional journals and magazines.

After his retirement in 1986, he and his wife, Abby, lived in Japan for two years where Abby taught English in a Nagasaki college and Nile photographed. He also conducted seminars for a group of doctors who wanted to increase their fluency in English as it related to medicine.

Nile and Abby traveled throughout Southeast Asia. Nile photographed the total solar eclipse of 1988 from aboard a cruise ship in the Celebes Sea, near Borneo. They spent two weeks in China visiting major cities from Beijing, to Xian, to Singapore, days before the Tiananmen Square uprising.

When Nile and Abby returned to the U.S. they settled in Tucson, Arizona, partly so that Nile could continue with his interest in astronomy and in archaeoastronomy. In March, 1994, he published an illustrated paper in Sky and Telescope magazine on an ancient sun-watching station near Tucson. His research on this site has continued to the present. He has many images of distinctive shadow patterns on prehistoric Native American petroglyph celestial symbols: patterns made during the solstices and the equinoxes, usually at sunrise.

His interest in petroglyphs, pictographs, and prehistoric ruins has led him and Abby to travel throughout the Southwest in recent years. Two of their favorite sites are Chaco Canyon, in New Mexico, and Canyon de Chelly, in Arizona. Nile has made hundreds of photographs of petroglyphs at Three Rivers, and Boca Negra Canyon in New Mexico, and at Painted Rocks and Signal Hill in Arizona. He has interesting photos of pictographs that are about a thousand years old from Chaco Canyon, and from Hueco Tanks, in Texas.

During his years in photography he has had 26 one-person exhibits of personal creative images in U. S museums, galleries, and universities, as well as in two galleries outside the U.S. He has also been in over 40 group shows. He recently completed a one-person fine art exhibit of computer enhanced images, CHINA. The exhibit opened in February, 1999, in Tucson. A subsequent one-person exhibit cyberZENopened in February, 2000, in Tucson.

This web site was initially created with the expert advice and help of his son, James, a web and computer consultant living in Los Angeles. The site received the First Award in 1999, from the Arizona Daily Star newspaper in a competion of local non-commercial sites.

Nile’s home and office are at 7812 East Elida St., Tucson, AZ 85715-5009. Questions regarding Nile Root’s photography can be directed to Abby Root at [abbyr314 at gmail dot com]. His biography is included in Who’s Who in America.

IN MEMORIUM

Nile Root, photographer and teacher, retired in Tucson because of its sunny weather, clear night skies, and cultural amenities. He died here on April 2, 2004, at the age of 77. Although he earned his living by practicing and teaching scientific and medical photography, his passion was his use of photography as a medium for fine art. His expressive photographs, made over a span of 65 years, have appeared in museums, galleries and universities in the United States and abroad.

Upon his retirement in 1986, Nile lived for two years in Nagasaki, Japan, where his wife taught English. During the nearly 15 years of his retirement in Tucson, his photographs appeared in nine solo exhibits at the Artist of the Month Gallery in the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Tucson. He also had solo exhibits at the Tucson Jewish Community Center and at Tohono Chul Park. In Phoenix his work is now on display in a group show at the Sky Harbor International Airport. In 1999 with the help of his son, James, he created a website which serves as an annotated portfolio of over a thousand of his photographs. This website, www.niler.com, will continue indefinitely.

His interest in astronomy and archeoastronomy led to his publication in the March 1994 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine of an illustrated article on an ancient sun-watching station near Tucson.
His interest in petroglyphs, pictographs, and prehistoric ruins led him and his wife, Abby, to journeys throughout the Southwest, to Easter Island and to Machu Picchu.

His scientific photography began when he served as a Photographer’s Mate in the U.S. Navy in World War II. After his discharge in 1946, he was employed by the U.S. Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT) in occupied West Germany as a microphotographer.

Returning to Denver in 1947, he owned and operated Photography Workshop, Inc., establishing the first rental darkrooms in Denver. In addition to selling cameras and film, Nile used his store as a gallery of fine art photography, displaying not only his own work but that of Minor White, Walter Chappell, Syl Labrot, and Arnold Gasson, all of whom, as did Nile, went on to careers in photography.

In 1972, after founding and directing departments of medical photography and illustration in two Denver hospitals, Nile began a 12-year teaching career in biocommunications at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology, retiring in 1986 as Professor Emeritus and with the Award for Outstanding Teaching at RIT. His devotion to and respect for his students and colleagues was matched in turn by theirs to and for him.

Nile’s chief professional affiliation, begun in 1965, was with the Biological Photographers Association (BPA), now renamed the BioCommunications Association (BCA), from whom he received its highest honor, the Louis Schmidt Award.

Nile was born in 1926 in Denver, Colorado. He was predeceased by his parents, Victor Root and Ella May Birdsall-Holaway, and his sister, Madeline Root Proulx. He is survived by his wife of 44 years, Abigail Brown Root, his son, James (Pamela) Root and granddaughter, Lena, of Los Angeles, his aunt, Ida Skinner Root of Big Springs, Nebraska, and his nephew, Victor (Suzanne) Proulx, of Denver. He will be remembered, as well, by his many loyal friends, colleagues, and former students.

His family wishes to thank Martha Morriss, his nurse, and all the other people at Casa de la Luz Hospice who helped care for Nile in his home during his last days.

His ashes will be scattered. A celebration of his life will be held in Los Angeles this summer. In keeping with Nile’s belief in the innate creativity of each person, his family urges creative actions of one’s own and the nurturing of creativity in others.