Martina Shenal
Tucson, Arizona
Martina Shenal is a Professor in the Photography, Video & Imaging program at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Through multiple photographic series her research explores human interventions within the landscape - highlighting the ways that we alter, mediate, and represent it. Recent projects explore environmental impacts on forest and river ecologies, centering adaptation and resilience in a rapidly warming climate. Works included here are from the series: 20/20 (notes on visibility), produced in Oregon’s high desert after massive wildfires consumed over a million acres.
Her current research, Groundwater II: Water Advocacy on the Santa Cruz River, is an interdisciplinary project funded by the Arizona Institute for Resilience in 2025. Added to the list of America’s most endangered rivers in 2024, the project focuses on the greater Tucson watershed, and the negative impacts of military and aviation industries dumping TCE in the 1940s-70s. Decades of over-pumping and a rapidly warming climate have depleted the aquifer- ongoing remediation efforts to filter out contaminates and re-charge the river using treated effluent are slowly restoring the river ecosystem.
