1245
SAVAGE, CHARLES ROSCOE (1832–1909)
American photographer
Charles Roscoe Savage’s beginnings were modest.
He grew up in a poor Southampton neighborhood and
as the son of a gardener received very little schooling
and was expected to contribute to the family fi nances
at an early age. He did, however, have an interest in
religion and in 1848, despite his family’s objections,
he converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
Day Saints (the Mormons). In 1855 Savage left Eng-
land for New York City. Although he was interested
in photography while still in England, only when he
reached New York did he begin his study in earnest. He
found the trade to be very secretive and had diffi culty
in receiving training of any kind. Eventually, through
reading, experimentation, and paid lessons he became
quite competent.
In 1860 he arrived in Council Bluffs, Iowa (then
the main departure point for the Overland and Oregon
Trails) where he set up a crude darkroom and gallery.
He was able to earn enough money to buy and outfi t a
wagon for his small family for the trip westward. On
August 28, 1860, Savage fi nally reached the Mormon
Zion in Utah. At fi rst his business was almost exclu-
sively devoted to portraiture, but Savage soon went
outdoors by photographing the buildings of Salt Lake
City as well as the mountains and small towns of Utah.
After several years, though, Savage felt more and more
isolated from other progressive photographers and from
the latest developments in the art. In 1866 he came up
with a daring plan to travel 9,000 miles from Salt Lake
City to San Francisco to New York and then back to
Utah that would plunge him deeply in debt, but which
began his rise to national prominence as a Western
photographer.
Savage left Salt Lake City for San Francisco,
California by stagecoach. He visited with a number
of photographers while in the city including Carleton
Watkins. He then took a steamer down to Panama,
crossed the Isthmus and took another boat north to New
York City. In New York he bought photographic sup-
plies from the E. and H.T. Anthony Co. and visited with
several publishers before traveling to Philadelphia to
pick up a wagon similar to the darkroom wagons used
by Civil War photographers. He shipped the wagon by
boat and rail to Nebraska City, Nebraska. He then trav-
eled across the Plains, into the Rocky Mountains, and
back to Salt Lake City (of course photographing the
more famous places on the Oregon Trail as he went).
Savage made a number of contacts on this voyage and
soon after his images started showing up as lithographs
in Harper’s Weekly and Leslie’s Illustrated and were
marketed on the East Coast through the New York
fi rm of Fowler and Wells. Savage also subsequently
published articles in The Philadelphia Photographer
and Humphrey’s Journal of Photography and the Allied
Arts and Sciences.
In 1869 when the Union Pacifi c and Central Pacifi c
Railroads were scheduled to come together at Promon-
tory, Utah, Savage was asked to join Andrew Joseph
Russell and Alfred Hart to photograph the fi nal drama
of “The Work of the Age.” This event opened doors
among the railroad companies and for the next 30 years
Savage enjoyed free passes and sometimes even private
luxury cars on several lines. Savage’s photographs en-
couraged tourism for the railroads while providing him
the means to travel about the West photographing the
landscape and its diverse peoples. Savage also benefi t-
ted from interest in the Mormons of Utah. Americans
had a morbid curiosity about polygamy (Savage himself
would eventually marry four women), with the worship
of a living prophet, and with the Mormon theocratic
government. After the railroad was completed, greater
number of tourists visited Salt Lake City and a stop at
Savage’s studio became almost mandatory.
In 1869 Savage also met (presumably for the fi rst
time) two of the best known photographers of the
American West, William Henry Jackson and Timothy
O’Sullivan. Although at the time they could not know
it, these three would introduce the country to the scenic
Western landscape long before Buffalo Bill peddled
the mythic West of cowboys and Indians. Whereas
O’Sullivan and Jackson would travel to the most remote
areas of the West, Savage stuck to the more traveled
byways, using wagons and trains rather than mules
and makeshift boats. And although Savage had an ap-
preciation for wilderness, he did not embrace it as did
O’Sullivan and Jackson whose photographs celebrate
the breathtaking landscape and majestic scale of the
West. In comparison with these two, Savage’s photo-
graphs focus on development. Upon fi rst seeing what
would later become Zion National Park Savage wrote,
“From a picturesque point of view, it was grand, sub-
lime, and majestic, but as a place of residence, lonely
and unattractive, reminding one of living in a stone box;
the landscape, a skyscrape; a good place to visit, and a
nice place to leave” (Richards, 66).
In part due to this ambivalence towards nature, Sav-
age’s images have never received the critical attention
of Jackson and O’Sullivan. Certainly he is not put in the
same category as Carleton Watkins or Edweard Muy-
bridge whose subtle experiments with unconventional
views and composition are lacking in Savage’s work. He
did, however, document an important sub-culture (the
Mormons) and his relentless travels around the West
ensured that he would be remembered among the major
names of nineteenth-century Western photographers.