Because I love to read, but my funds for books and such are limited, I spend a lot of time on the Internet looking for things of interest on the web. My searches usually take me in one of two directions; literature, or some aspect of Mormonism.

My most recent adventure began yesterday afternoon in photography class. Our teacher was absent, and we were given an assignment to research from a list of photographers and write a brief essay explaining one individual's contribution to photography. But of course, the majority of the class jumped on the classroom Macs and was doing everything BUT the assignment... and I sat with no computer, and a desire to entertain myself in some way.

My friend allowed me to use his iPod Touch to browse the web, where I started (as per usual) with Google Search.

A brief look at the list brought the names Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange to my attention. I was familiar enough with Ansel Adams to know that he did a lot of work out west in the national parks and such, so I decided to look into what kind of work he did in Utah.

The first discovery in my adventure: a brief time line of Adams life that revealed he did a collaborative project with Dorothea Lange on the Mormons in the early fifties.

My interest was sparked. I returned to Google search--no easy task on an iPod Touch.

I found the name of the photo-essay ("Three Mormon Towns") and the magazine information (LIFE magazine, September 6th, 1954) and tried to find an archived version of the magazine. No dice--but I did manage to find this book review that mentions the Adams/ Lange project, the project of another photographer (Carole Gallagher), and the experiences they all had while staying with the Mormons in Utah. Gallagher's work is fascinating, albeit a chilling topic; the effect of US government nuclear missile testing in Nevada on the inhabitants of Utah. The movie Erin Brockovitch comes to mind, and Gallagher sums up my feelings in a way that bears repeating:

"Not only do you have [Mormons] saying that they are the one true church and that they have a monopoly on the truth, but it's part of their doctrine that the American government was part of God's divine plan! All this is background as to why it was so easy to conduct testing here for so many years and not have people make a fuss about it. A divinely inspired government doesn't poison its own people."

As I continued through the book review, I left with the impression that perhaps the Cold War wasn't so cold after all... which makes me think the book itself is definitely worth a look.

After I finished with the book review, I returned to Google to see if I could find a collection of the photographs Lange and Adams took in Utah, since the majority never made it to the LIFE article anyway. And because I'm web-savvy, I found Lange's photographs here. I browsed through them for as I long as I could stand on the iPod Touch before finally accepting that a computer would be the better choice.

And tonight, I made one last attempt to find the actual "The Mormon Towns" photo-essay. The closest I got was to pages where you can buy old copies of the 1954 LIFE. So as far as I can tell, LIFE archives on the web do not exist.

But, I did find an interesting headline in one of my Google searches: "BYU acquires Lange photos - Salt Lake Tribune." But clicking on the result revealed the article had been removed. So I went back to the results and clicked "Cached" and found Google's preserved copy of the article, which begins:

"The Brigham Young University Museum of Art has purchased a group of 17 photographs of southern Utah communities by famed documentary photographer Dorothea Lange. The images are from Lange's "Three Mormon Towns" series, which appeared in a 1954 issue of Life magazine."

And with that, my "Things to do/see when I get to Utah" list was born. Not to mention that I told my teacher about all that I learned, and was then exempted from the actual assignment.

Who knew boredom could be so educational AND beneficial at the same time?