George Edward Anderson

George Edward Anderson (October 28, 1860 – May 9, 1928) was an early American photographer known for his portraiture and documentary photographs of early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temples.

George Edward Anderson was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and apprenticed as a teenager under photographer Charles Roscoe Savage. At Savage’s Temple Bazaar, Anderson became friends with fellow apprentices John Hafen and John F. Bennett. Hafen later become an accomplished artist and Bennett was instrumental in preserving Anderson’s glass plate negatives.

At seventeen, Anderson established his photography studio in Salt Lake City with his brothers, Stanley and Adam. He established a studio in Manti, Utah in 1886 and moved his studio to Springville, Utah with his bride, Olive Lowry in 1888.

Anderson is best known for his traveling tent studio, set up in small towns throughout central, eastern, and southern Utah, that he used to document the lives of residents in the years 1884 to 1907.

Although known as a portrait photographer, Anderson's studio portraits are complemented by thousands of documentary portraits taken near homes, barns, and businesses. These photos document families, small town Utah history, railroad history, mining history (including the Scofield mine disaster), and the building of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temples. Pure landscape photography was not Anderson's main interest, but his photographs of Church sites are important documents of LDS history. He photographed these sites while traveling across the country to begin his LDS Church mission in England from 1909-1911. The Deseret Sunday School Union of the Church published some of the views, as Anderson called them, in a booklet entitled The Birth of Mormonism in Picture.

Upon completion of his mission, Anderson returned to South Royalton, Vermont and set up a photography studio near the birthplace of LDS prophet Joseph Smith. He added a number of Church history site photographs, as well as portraits of Church members and local residents to his growing collection. Finally, in November 1913 he returned to his family and home in Springville, Utah.

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