St. Joseph's Chapel, Wetcamp, Gila River Reservation, AZ: Scene Before Roof Installed, 1918 October

The Father Augustine Schwarz Photograph Collection contains 163 photographs taken between 1916 and 1940, the majority of which were taken between 1916 and 1926 and document Franciscan chapels, missions, and religious activities at numerous Indian villages in Arizona. Several photographs were recorded by Fr. Augustine's brother, Father Arnold Schwarz, O.F.M. In addition, the collection includes artifacts, postcards, copies of dissertations, photograph work sheets, and miscellaneous research materials. These are arranged in nine series.

Series I: Biographical Materials includes letters from Fr. Augustine's niece and a vitae written by Fr. Augustine, which the Labriola Center obtained from the Santa Barbara Mission in California.

Series II: Photographs records Franciscan missions, chapels, and religious activities. The majority of these images depict the Pima Mission of St. Michael's in Salt River and St. Johns Mission in Komatke. Activities at St. Johns are particularly well documented, including the well known St. Johns band, students, communicants, and daily work in running the reservation. There are numerous photographs of the missions and chapels on the Papago Reservation, including churches that Fr. Augustine built, Our Lady of Guadalupe at Cowlic, and St. Paul Chapel in Fresnal. One large photograph shows Fr. Augustine on location at Mission San Xavier with actors Walter Brennan and Gary Cooper. Fr. Augustine also spent time on the Apache reservation and photographed some sites there. Other photographs show New Mexico and Texas. Fr. Augustine identified and dated most of the photographs. The Labriola Center has arranged the photographs first by date and next by tribal location. They have been re-numbered to accord with this arrangement.

Series III: Postcards houses items received or collected by Fr. Augustine. Some are blank, some were written by his father, and some were written by Fr. Augustine while on vacation.

Series IV: Artifacts houses three items: a string ring and two pieces of rose bead work. These were made at St. Johns Mission and Fr. Augustine has identified the young women who made the necklaces. These were often sold at a crafts shop that at one time stood across from the church.

Series V: Guidebooks/Pamphlets contains a booklet of photographs of San Juan Capistrano Mission, San Diego, a booklet of hand-colored photographs recalling a trip to California, and a pamphlet on the history of San Xavier del Bac in Tucson, Arizona.

Series VI: Photograph Work Sheets houses items contributed by the ASU Anthropology Department. One group of worksheets is a photocopy of each photograph in the collection, while another contains descriptions of each photograph along with a number supplied by the Anthropology Department. The Labriola Center has added its new call number for each photograph to these sheets.

Series VII: Theses/Dissertations houses two items: a copy of a thesis by Susan Young Fenger entitled Study of a Photographic Collection: The Photographs of Fr. Augustine Schwarz and a dissertation by James S. Griffith entitled Catholic Religious Architecture of the Papago Reservation, Arizona. These materials were used to research the chapels and missions photographed by Fr. Augustine. Series VIII: Research Materials contains Patricia Etter's research notes regarding visits to the various missions, photocopies of pamphlets, news clippings, a bibliography, and maps locating all the sites. These materials were added to the collection in 2001.

The images in Series IX: Negatives were made from a number of Fr. Augustine's photographs to illustrate an article titled Indians and Missions published by the Journal of the Southwest in 1989 (volume 31).