Preserving photographic images of Church historic sites became a personal crusade for George Edward Anderson, an early 20th Century photographer from Springville, Utah. Some of the results of his labor are now on display at the Museum of Church History and Art.

"Cradle of the Restoration: Photographs of Latter-day Saint Historic Sites by George Edward Anderson" opened Sept. 7 at the museum, located across the street west from Temple Square. The exhibit continues through April 14, 1991."The desire I have had for years to make lantern slides of the Church history pictures and get them before the young people of the Latter-day Saints (also the missionaries could use them) comes with emphasis to me," wrote Anderson, who spent part of his life as bishop of his ward in Springville.

The result of the photographer's desire is what museum art curator Robert O. Davis calls "an irreplaceable record of early Latter-day Saint history."

Departing on a mission to England in 1906, Anderson had obtained permission from Church leaders to spend a year photographing Church historial sites in Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois.

Among Anderson's images are views of the Sacred Grove, Joseph Smith's birthplace, the Susquehannah River, the Martin Harris farm, the Kirtland Temple and various sites and scenes of Nauvoo.

Although photos of Church historic sites abound today, they are quite unique for that period, when photography was in its infancy. Anderson preserved hundreds of images on fragile glass-plate negatives, doing his work at the mid-point between early Church history and the present day.

The sites are shown with much of their pristine state intact, although a transition to the industrial technology of the 20th Century is clearly evident, with tourists' motor cars in one scene and a steam locomotive in another.

While some photographers of the period were in the business for money, Anderson was in it for art and history, an apprentice reportedly said.

"Anderson used available light and shadow to record his coherent compositions with great technical prowess," Davis said. "Clarity and mood were important to Anderson. He also skillfully placed people within his pictures, adding human interest and reinforcing the fact that he was recording historic sites from his own early 20th Century time frame."

The photographs in the exhibit are newly printed from the original negatives. Also included are a presentation album prepared by Anderson; a 1909 booklet, "The Birth of Mormonism in Picture," containing many of the exhibited images; a camera like the one Anderson used; and other interpretive materials.

Born in 1860, Anderson was the eldest of nine children. In his teens, he was apprenticed to C. R. Savage of Salt Lake City, the most successful photographer in the region. Before he was 20, Anderson had opened a portrait studio in Salt Lake City.

To increase his business, and because he wanted to document rural Utah life, he traveled to small towns in central and southern Utah. By the middle 1880s, he opened a studio in Manti and began recording construction of the Manti Temple until its opening in 1888. He and his bride, Olive Lowry, were the second couple sealed in the temple.

Anderson created an estimated 30,000 glass plates from the time he entered business for himself until his death in 1928.

Working out of his portable tent gallery, in front yards, on the steps of homes, and in his Springville studio, he created thousands of portraits. He also documented the civic celebrations of growing towns, the arrival of railroads and industry, and the building of temples.

His mission, undertaken at the age of 45, produced 500 photographs of historic sites. Returning to the United States after a year in England, he set up a studio business on his own initiative near Joseph Smith's birthplace in Vermont for two more years before returning to Utah.

Davis said it was difficult and tedious to make the prints. Tremendous contrast ranges in the glass negatives made it necessary to use "dodging" and "burning in" techniques to even them out. He said the dense negatives were not matched to modern materials. Moreover, some were fogged.

The objective was to reproduce accurately all of the information on the negative, and there was no attempt to hide the many defects.