Photograph Collections

The photograph collections consist of over 250,000 images in approximately 700 collections. Collections range from well-known photographers including A.J. Russell, C.R. Savage, Charles Ellis Johnson, William Henry Jackson, Dr. William Hopkins, Burton Frasher, and W. Eugene Smith to images documenting USU, Cache Valley, Utah and the Intermountain West. The collections range from the 80,000 images of the Compton Studio collection of Brigham City, to images documenting 2000s Latinx history; from 19th Century Western exploration to Aggie sports and traditions.

These photographs can and have been utilized for a variety of purposes such as: illustrations for publications, documentaries, exhibits, and websites; for family history and genealogy; and as historic documents worthy of study in their own right. For example, range scientists use them to study historic changes in vegetation; historians see social and cultural changes by examining what was, and what was not, photographed; and artists and art historians analyze images that are considered artistic works of high quality.

Searching Photograph Collections: About 250,000 images are inventoried at the item level and can be searched from the Archives West database. Roughly 30,000 of these images have been digitized and are part of our digital collections. Collection-level descriptions are available in both the Archives West database as well the Merrill-Cazier Library’s catalog.