Reviews -- Set in Stone, Fixed in Glass: The Mormons, the West, and Their Photographers



	Set in Stone, Fixed in Glass: The Mormons, the West, and Their Photographers

Journal of the West, Brian Q. Cannon
In this work, Nelson D. Wadsworth, professor of journalism at Utah State University, delivers far more than the title suggests. This elegantly crafted book contains delightful biographical sketches, based on extensive research in primary sources, of prominent 19th-century Utah photographers. These individuals include Marsena Cannon, Charles R. Savage, James H. Crockwell, and George Edward Anderson. Not only these artists' photographic images of the Salt Lake Temple but nearly 300 of their other prints of frontier Utah and Nevada are clearly reproduced in this handsome volume. Readers with an interest in 19th-century Utah or Nevada and those interested in the history of frontier photography will enjoy this work.

In tandem with Wadsworth's previously published Through the Camera Eyes, this book establishes the author as the leading authority on photography in 19th-century Mormon country. Set in Stone, Fixed in Glass represents the culmination of roughly three decades of collecting and preserving copy negatives and prints. Unfortunately, this project began as a casual hobby, and Wadsworth failed to record the location of many of the original glass negatives or prints that he reproduced.

This book fulfills the author's objective of honoring Utah's pioneer photographers. Frontier photography was often an itinerant venture—more of a costly passion or obsession than a road to wealth or fame. Costly equipment, ever-changing photographic technology, fierce competition, and economic downturns kept most frontier photographers poor. As this book demonstrates, however, the efforts of these early artists yielded a treasure trove of images for historians.

Library Journal, Russell T. Clement
Issued to commemorate the centennial of the building's dedication, this pictorial history of the Mormon Church's Salt Lake Temple features the work of a dozen pioneer photographers who recorded its construction over a 40-year period. While the photographs provide a compelling journey through a black-and-white past, Wadsworth provides color in his anecdotal and richly variegated text. Wadsworth (journalism, Utah State University) has assembled an astonishing collection of pristine, epiphanous images from the past 140 years and has resurrected the image-makers themselves as flesh-and-blood. The author's coup de grace is a chapter on "The Max Florence Affair," detailing a clandestine photographic mission inside the temple in 1911. Recommended for regional collections and those strong in American architecture, photography and religion.

Deseret News, Carma Wadley
On April 6, 1892, to much rejoicing from the assembled throngs, the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple was set in place. After 39 years of construction, the building was finished. It would take another year before the interior was readied and the edifice dedicated, but the placing of the capstone was the focus of a great celebration.

Using this event as a common thread, Nelson Wadsworth weaves a tapestry of visual history, pulling into focus the lives and times of Utah photographers who were (or could have been) at the ceremony. The book's title might lead you to believe that the photographers are an afterthought. But actually they are the central subject. Aside from being an object for the camera, the temple itself doesn't receive as much attention as the photographers. It shows up in various stages throughout the book, and the building makes a nice focal point, around which the history of Utah photography unfolds.

Ten photographers are highlighted—from Marsena Cannon to James William and Harry Shipler. Some names, such as Charles R. Savage and George Edward Anderson, will be familiar to anyone with an acquaintance with Utah's pictorial past. Others, such as C. W. Carter or James H. Crockwell, are less well-known. And still more could be included. One of his biggest frustrations, notes Wadsworth in the acknowledgements, was not being able to use everything he discovered. Some of these other photographers, such as Efie Huntington (the only woman among the group) were included in chapters on their mentors; the others will have to be dealt with later, he notes.

The narrative is informative and readable, detailing the lives of these photographers and the challenges they faced in practicing their primitive craft. A few technical details explain the early picturemaking processes involved—from daguerreotype and tintype to albumen and bromide papers and others.

But the pictures, of course, are true to the old thousand-word cliche and provide a telling look at people and places. The coming age of photography coincided with the coming of age of Salt Lake City, captured here in clarity and detail. There are pictures of LDS leaders—famous pictures of Brigham Young and not-so-famous pictures of Lorenzo Snow and Wilford Woodruff. There are pictures of mill workers, baseball teams and theatrical troupes, pioneer families and Indian chiefs. There are scenes of streets lined with crude wooden buildings and then impressive stone structures, and early streets filled with wagons and later streets filled with trolley tracks and lined by telephone poles. And photos of the photographers themselves.

And there are pictures from other places as well—from James Crockwell's sojourns into Nevada to George Edward Anderson's tour of church history sites and Charles Ellis Johnson's trip to Palestine and Jerusalem. There are pictures made for postcards and stereoscopes and expositions. And they all are a wonderful look back.

In an interesting epilogue (and in keeping with his underlying temple theme), Wadsworth tells the story of the Max Florence affair. Florence, a Salt Lake entrepreneur, got a disaffected Mormon convert named Gisbert Brossard to illegally enter the temple and take pictures, which he hoped to sell. But the church spoiled his deal by announcing the preparation of its own book of pictures. Three of Brossard's poor-quality photographs, taken from lantern slides uncovered by Wadsworth in a bit of detective work, are included.

"Set in Stone, Fixed in Glass" takes us from pioneer days to the 20th century. In this centennial year of the dedication of the temple, this book is a fitting tribute. But its appeal goes far beyond that, as well.

FARMS Review of Books, David Rolph Seely
On 16 September 1911, the Salt Lake Tribune published an account of certain individuals who had secretly taken pictures of the interior of the Salt Lake Temple and who had attempted to sell them to the church. The headlines read: "Photographs secretly taken of Mormon Temple's interior; sent for sale to Church chief. President replies: 'Church will not negotiate with thieves and blackmailers.'"1 The blackmail scheme was perpetrated by Max Florence, who was at the time in New York City trying to sell sixty-eight unauthorized photographs of the interior of the Salt Lake Temple. Florence had employed the help of a recent convert to the church, Gisbert Bossard, who, disenchanted with the administration of the church, had, assisted by a gardener for the temple grounds, gained access to the Salt Lake Temple and had taken a series of photographs of the interior of the Salt Lake Temple. Apparently motivated by money and "revenge" on the church, these individuals had taken the pictures when the Salt Lake Temple was closed for renovation during the summer of 1911. Florence and Bossard had sent a letter to the First Presidency with a proposal of blackmail—that the church would give them $100,000 and the photographs would be returned; otherwise, they would be shown publicly. President Joseph F. Smith, the recipient of the letter, was outraged, and his response was, "I will make no bargain with thieves or traffickers in stolen goods. I prefer to let the law deal with them."2

From

Notes:
1. As discussed by Nelson B. Wadsworth, Set in Stone, Fixed in Glass: The Great Mormon Temple and Its Photographers (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), 355-59.
2. An account of this incident can be found in Wadsworth, Set in Stone, Fixed in Glass, 355-78; Kent Walgren, "Inside the Salt Lake Temple: Gisbert Bossard's 1911 Photographs," Dialogue 29/3 (1996): 1-43; and Harvard S. Heath, foreword to The House of the Lord, Signature edition, v-xiii.