The LaVell Cooley Photography Collection
Utah State University's First Masters Graduate in Geology and His Photography Collection
Curated by Megan George
Infrared image of South Rim, Grand Canyon, Arizonia
LaVell Cooley while in Puerto Rico
The History
LaVell Irvin Cooley was born on February 25, 1902 in Mendon, Utah to Alfred Irvine Gardner and Margaret Elizabeth Bird. In 1925, LaVell married. While LaVell attended USU, he worked for the yearbook, The Buzzer, as the snapshot editor and photographer. He was the first person to graduate from Utah State University with a masters degree in geology. He served in the military during World War II and the Korean War. LaVell passed away in 1980 in Long Beach, California.
The Photography
LaVell's love of photography led him to start his own photo compnay in Logan: LaVell Cooley Expert Photo Finishing. He eventually began to use this expertise to capture his other passion of geology. LaVell loved to experiment and frequently used different photo papers, photo developing techniques, filters, and infrared photography. LaVell traveled from coast to coast, often stopping at National Parks, and spent a considerable amount of time traveling throughout the Caribbean.
The Geology
LaVell's masters thesis was entitled "The Devonian of the Bear RIver Range, Utah", and was completed in July 1928. He examined the stratigraphy, sedimentology, and paleontology of what was then termed the Jefferson Formation, and is now defined as the Water Canyon, Hyrum, Beirdneau, and Leatham Formations.
LaVell photographed many areas of geology, including a series of intraformational folds and several unconformities within the Devonian section.
Yellowstone, Wyoming
Cooley's Photo Collection
CURATOR'S NOTES
The LaVell Cooley Photography Collection was donated by his wife Gwendolyn in 1995 to USU. This collection was previously listed as consisting of only 4 boxes. We discovered there were actually 15 boxes filled with hundreds of photographs, negatives, slides, and even film reels. He usually developed his own photography and he kept hundreds of negatives as well.
He truly had a passion for photography as an art and went on to submit his work to photography contests. While we wish we had the budget and time to make all of these photos public for research, we chose the ones believed to be the most valuable.
LaVell Cooley doesn't have any living descendants and looking through all of these photos he took and creating this exhibit allows us to tell his story. His photos have lived long after he passed and we hope that these photos can help geology researchers in the future.
This exhibit only scratches the surface of the photography collection, we hope to eventually publish more of his photography.
The collection can be found at the Utah State University Special Collections and Archives.