Gandy Collection of Tampa Photography

The Skip Gandy collection documents the history of Tampa Bay from the 1950s to the 2010s. The Special Collections department at USF's Tampa campus library houses his lifetime of more than 80,000 negatives and additional prints, some by Skip's father, Sandy Gandy. Skip Gandy's innovative aerial photography allows us to see urban and natural settings of the Tampa Bay region, illustrating the intersections between growing communities, businesses, and the rapid changes to the region's ecosystem. His photographs of people, events, buildings, and the environment capture Tampa as it started transforming into the third most populous city in Florida. The images are in black and white as well as in color. In 2023, USF Libraries held a fundraiser to digitize the remaining images in the vast collection of more than 125,000 negatives, slides, and prints. The collection is divided into five categories to facilitate browsing.