In 1890, a Pennsylvanian man named James William Shipler set up a photography studio in Salt Lake City. As one of the only non-Mormon photographers in Utah at the time, Shipler was able to carve out a niche with both gentile and LDS business owners by documenting new developments, business openings and commercial events. “Back then, you didn’t open a business without a photographer to record the event,” Deseret News’ Susan Lyman reported in 1988. “If you lived in Salt Lake City, the photographer you hired was undoubtedly named Shipler.”
James’ unpaid creative pursuits led him to capture ordinary daily life in Salt Lake as well; some of his early work documents the construction of St. Mary’s Cathedral in 1904, the first years of University of Utah and the primitive stages of West Temple in 1903. The business was passed down through three generations of Shiplers, including son Harry Shipler who took an interest in photojournalism and became one of the first newspaper photographers in the West.
Between 1890 to 1980, the Shipler line captured an estimated 100,000 crisp, clean images documenting the cultural and architectural growth in Utah. The Utah State Historical Society maintains a digitized Shipler Commercial Photographers Collection on their website.
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