The Savage View: Charles Savage, Pioneer Mormon Photographer

The great western photographer Charles Savage was twenty-three years old in 1855 when he migrated to America on a sailing ship packed with immigrants from England. Savage kept a detailed journal of his on-board experiences as well as his adventures crossing America in a covered wagon with camera and family to the promised land in Utah. Savage was an accomplished and prolific photographer who lived successfully within his Salt Lake City community and travelled widely throughout the West taking photographs and befriending other important photographers of his day such as Carleton Watkins, Timothy O'Sullivan, Alfred Hart and A. J. Russell. Savage took several of the West's most famous images at the celebration of the joining of the transcontinental railroads at Promontory, Utah, in 1869, the first photographs of what became Zion National Park, Native Americans, and the construction of Mormon shrines such as the Temple and Tabernacle. His photographs were sold throughout the United States and internationally, and despite losing his negatives to fire, Savage persevered and maintained the premier photographic studio in 19th century Utah.