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Peter G. Czerny escaped from East Germany in 1953 with his family at the age of eleven. His family left Germany with very little. They settled in Clearfield, Utah, twenty miles from the lake and Czerny developed a fascination with the Great Salt Lake. Peter took numerous walks toward the lake, but did not actually see it close-up until the family moved to Salt Lake City a year later. The family often went to the lake for picnics, to view sunsets, and to swim or wade in the salty water. Peter became more and more fascinated with the lake.
When he obtained his driver's license Czerny would spend as many as four days a week exploring the lakes shores and some of the islands. He decided to produce a picture history of the lake so he began taking photographs. Over a period of six years Czerny took and collected over 1300 photographs of the Great Salt Lake. Included were old photographs documenting the Lake's history and development; color negatives, slides, and transparencies. Czerny hired planes and helicopters to get photographs of more remote areas. He was injured several times and experienced many other adventures during the course of his research.
Peter served an LDS mission in Austria. He served a two-year stretch in the army (1963-65) and graduated from the University of Utah. In 1971 he began work as the supervising film editor for the Brigham Young University Motion Picture Studio (Provo, Utah). He continued his obsessive research on weekends, vacations, holidays, and evenings. Czerny's fascination of the Lake produced many exciting photographs of the Lake that were used in the first picture book of the Great Salt Lake.
The collection contains photographs, slides, and color transparencies taken of the Great Salt Lake. Early photographs of the Great Salt Lake show boats and boating, cities and towns, railroads, resorts, and general scenery around the entire lake. Czerny took many color photographs of Antelope Island, Carrington Island, Fremont Island, Gunnison Island, lake shores, wildlife (animals and birds), farming around the lake, railroads in the area, causeways. Anything and everything about the lake fascinated Czerny. He rented helicopters and airplanes to get some of his images; received several injuries, assisted in rescues, fought a brush fire, endured numerous exhausting hikes to get "one more picture" but never lost his love for the lake.
Peter G. Czerny Photograph Collection, ca. 1860-1975, Utah State Historical Society.
Gift of Peter G. Czerny.
The Peter G. Czerny Photograph Collection is the physical property of the Utah Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah. Literary rights, including copyright, may belong to the authors or their heirs and assigns. Please contact the Historical Society for information regarding specific use of this collection.
The photographs in this collection were separated from