Overview

Welcome to the research guide for photograph collections at the Church History Library. The library holds thousands of photographs that represent the Church, its members, its buildings, its organizations, and affiliated events and activities all over the world. Key elements of the library’s photograph collection are early portraiture, early Salt Lake City, and the pioneer era in general.

Thousands of photographs in the collection have been cataloged as individual items. A simple keyword search (person’s name, location name, unit name, and so forth) in the online catalog should be the first step in searching for an image. There are, however, several large collections that may require more in-depth research to identify what you are looking for. This guide provides information on navigating larger collections.

Each section contains resources that are available online and some that are not. Online resources are digitized content that you can access from your computer by clicking on the title. Other resources can be viewed at the Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. You can access nondigital collection information in the online catalog and request to see the source when you visit the library.

At the Church History Library, historians and technicians digitize hundreds of images every month. If a collection is not currently available digitally, it could be soon. You can request digitization through the Ask Us inquiry form. Some collections are digitized but, because of copyright law, they require that you are logged in to view the digital images and will require permission to download.