Charles Roscoe Savage (August 16, 1832 - February 4, 1909) was a British-born landscape and portrait photographer who produced images of the American West. He is best known for his 1869 photographs of the linking of the first transcontinental railroad.
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Life and work
Savage was born in Southampton, England, on August 16, 1832 to John and Ann, the first of four children. At the age of four, his clothing caught on fire from a stray burning woodchip, and he suffered bad burns. Rather than attend school, he peddled salt in Southampton and helped a coachmaker sharpen tools. On May 25, 1848 at age 15, he was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), to his parents' disapproval. Savage moved to the Isle of Wight to work as a fishmonger and helped the Mormons there to proselyte. He returned to Southampton and worked for William Eddington in a stationary shop from 1851 to 1852. Eddington also educated Savage; Savage writes that Eddington "placed me as it were on the road to fame."
Savage worked in a part-time mission as a secretary for the Southampton mission president, collecting donations and keeping track of them. In 1853, he served as a full-time missionary for the church in Switzerland, where he learned to speak French and a little German. After 19 months he returned to England where he met Annie Adkins. In December 1855, he was appointed as an interpreter for French-speaking Italian Latter-day Saints who were immigrating to America through the LDS Church's perpetual emigration fund. Ten days after Annie arrived the two were married on June 24, 1856. Savage worked in Samuel Booth's print shop and took odd jobs. Savage and his friend Stenhouse experimented with taking stereographic photos, which were the first stereographic photos of Long Island. It is likely that Savage received instruction from Edward Covington, a daguerrotyper in New York, among others. He went to Florence, Nebraska on a church assignment in 1859, and met his family in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he established his first independent studio and gallery.
In the spring of 1860, he traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah Territory with his family, where he established a photography studio with a partner, Marsena Cannon, an early Utah daguerreotypist and photographer. A year later, after Cannon moved to southern Utah, Savage established a partnership with artist George M. Ottinger. Ottinger and Savage helped to organize the Deseret Academy of Art, where was soon replaced by the University of Deseret. Ottinger painted scenery for the Salt Lake Theater and took photos of local buildings and landscapes. Savage became increasingly popular as a portrait photographer and prominent people in Utah commissioned him to take their photos. Savage was an active member of the 20th ward, and also sang in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, joined the Nauvoo Legion, and lectured on various subjects at the local Literary Institute. Savage advertised in local newspapers to increase his business. Several times, Savage made a collage of the baby photographs he had taken over the years, and often families with featured children would buy a copy. Unlike many other frontier photographers, Savage retained the original glass plate negatives of his photos (he used the wet-plate collodion process), giving him more control over their use. In 1866, Savage took a tour of major photography studios in the United States, both to improve his photography skills and to publish reproductions of his photos. In San Francisco, he met Carleton Watkins, who described his method for producing large works by placing developed negatives in a water bath until he was ready to finish them. Savage traveled by boat to New York city, where progress in photography instruction and technology inspired him. After having a darkroom wagon custom-made, he traveled with a group of Mormon settlers back to Salt Lake City.
Many of Savage's photographs were reproduced in Harper's Weekly newspaper. This partnership continued until 1870, when Savage began submitting photos to Leslie's Illustrated instead.
As a photographer under contract with the Union Pacific Railroad, Savage traveled to California in 1866 and then followed the rails back to Utah. He photographed the linking of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific on Promontory Summit, at Promontory, Utah in 1869. This series is considered his most famous work. Other well-known Savage images include pictures of the Great Basin tribes, especially the Paiute and Shoshone. Savage photographed scenic areas of the West, including Yellowstone National Park, Zion National Park, and created many images documenting the growth of Utah towns and cities. England-born artist Alfred Lambourne often painted scenes while Savage photographed. He also traveled extensively over western North America, taking pictures in areas of Canada and Mexico, and in areas from the Pacific Ocean to Nebraska in the Midwest. Most of Savage's archived photographs, produced by several different early photographic methods, were lost in 1883 in a disastrous studio fire.
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Selected Works
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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