Gene Arant

Gene Arant was the perfect person to guide photography students through the Everglades:

He could smell a snake.

A retired Palm Beach Community College art professor, Mr. Arant died Friday of a brain tumor at Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach. He was 78.

"We would be walking through the Everglades, and Gene would tell us to watch out, there was a snake nearby," recalled Fatima NeJame, director of the Palm Beach Photographic Centre in Delray Beach, where Mr. Arant also taught. "We would look at him like he was crazy. But, sure enough, a snake would soon come slithering by. He could literally smell a snake.

"Gene was a true Renaissance man, who helped hundreds and hundreds of students over the years, not just with their art but with their lives," she added. "And as a photographer, his images of the Everglades were just amazing."

Two huge photos are at the Palm Beach International Airport.

Born in Pahokee, Mr. Arant knew his way around the Florida swamps. "When he was a boy, his parents would let him spend the night in the woods," his widow, Judith, recalled Friday. "He'd take his dog, roast a duck, and never got lost."

Mr. Arant was a graduate of Palm Beach High School and Florida State University, where he had degrees in art and physics. Although he specialized in photography late in his career, he taught a variety of art subjects at PBCC from 1968 to his retirement in 2000. He continued to teach classes part-time until falling ill this spring.

"Gene would take any schedule as long as students needed classes," said Reuben Hale, retired chairman of PBCC's Division of Humanities. "Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when the school wouldn't let students use a facility after hours unless a faculty member was there, he would stay until midnight or even later to help students."

The Lake Worth resident put his scientific skills to work by inventing a photographic enlarger based on a cold cathode system. He held a patent on the enlarger's light source, his wife said.

As a teacher, Mr. Arant helped a school in Heredia, Costa Rica, gain accreditation as a cultural exchange institution, and taught there during summers. He co-founded the week-long Everglades expeditions for the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, where he also taught a variety of photographic printing techniques.

The noted New York photographer Joyce Tenneson included a portrait of Mr. Arant in her 2004 book Amazing Men.

In addition to his wife of 36 years, Mr. Arant is survived by six children - Jerry, Gail, Jeanna, Carolyn, Laura and Bethany; ten grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are pending. Contributions can be made in Mr. Arant's name to the Palm Beach Community College Scholarship Fund, or to a charity of one's choice.