Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image

Download or read book Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image written by Mary Campbell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the church's favorite photographers, Johnson (1857-1926) spent the 1890s and early 1900s taking pictures of Mormonism's most revered figures and sacred sites. At the same time, he did a brisk business in mail-order erotica, creating and selling stereoviews that he referred to as his "spicy pictures of girls." Situating these images within the religious, artistic, and legal culture of turn-of-the-century America, Campbell reveals the unexpected ways in which they worked to bring the Saints into the nation's mainstream after the scandal of polygamy. --Publisher description.