Munro’s hobby evolved into an even more invaluable public relations effort when President Albert Cousens, A1898, H1930, recognized the power of photography to boost the struggling college’s reputation. Professor Edwin Rollins, E1904, soon joined the venture, and the Munro-Rollins team joined forces to advertise and distribute photos of college activities. The sale of thirty-six photos to students yielded a profit of $1 for each negative made, Munro later recalled. Munro’s hobby, as the story goes, began in 1913 when he borrowed a camera to take picture of a Tufts tradition, the Parade of Horribles, where young men tried to outdo themselves with outlandish costumes. Many photographs have also been scanned and are available online. The collection, one of over seven hundred held by DCA, can be viewed by students, faculty, staff, and the public in the DCA reading room. His vast body of work totaled nearly 30,000 images by the time of his death in 1945, and now comprise the Melville Munro Collection housed in the university’s Digital Collections and Archives (DCA).
Photo: Tufts Digital Collections and ArchivesBy then, he had become fascinated by the potential of photography to capture daily life at the college, and he would go on to photograph Tufts for more than three decades. Melville Munro in 1924, looking dapper and carrying his trusty camera.
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