ST. GEORGE » Standing in cool water, Mark Hedengren snaps away as his photographic subject lounges in a Washington County reservoir. The temperature is a sweltering 102 degrees and Hedengren's shorts, plus his camera bag, are wet.

It's a hazard of the shoot for this Provo-based photographer as he updates a snapshot or two from Mormon history.

Hedengren is reshooting a controversial Life magazine photo essay originally compiled by world-famous photographers Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange. The September 1954 article, "Three Mormon Towns," sparked complaints from Mormons to the widely read magazine over some depictions of rural Utah life.

A 29-year-old professional photographer, Hedengren isn't looking to get all wet, just bring a fresh eye to the story, as he revisits Toquerville, Gunlock and St. George.

"I love southern Utah, Mormonism, photography and the work of those two photographers," the Brigham Young University graduate says. "The question became: Why wouldn't I do it?"

Adams and Lange, both renowned but for very different styles of photography, had already collaborated on several subjects when Life editors commissioned the photo essay.

"It's one of the best pictorials of Mormon life in the second half of the century," says James Swensen, a BYU art history professor and photo historian.

A challenging shoot

Lange, a documentarian, and Adams, primarily a landscape photographer, had both previously taken pictures in Utah. They began shooting for the article in 1953, and Swensen says they quarreled about the project. "It was their most difficult and probably, their best, together," he says.

The article's preface suggests the photo essay would depict the "depth and diversity of Mormon life," which includes a spread on one church day, shot in Gunlock. Life's editors ran more than 30 photos with text written by Daniel Dixon, Lange's son from her marriage to artist Maynard Dixon. Daniel Dixon had spent summers with his father in southern Utah's Mt. Carmel.

Hedengren says he wasn't intimidated by the idea of following in the footsteps of two well-known artists. "I never thought I'd mimic [their] style," he said, wearing a straw hat and shades as he pulled his SUV to the side of a dusty Gunlock street. "I really wanted to see, firsthand, the progression of these towns."

Journey to Utah's Dixie

Gunlock, located 20 miles northwest of St. George, was home to 22 families, Dixon wrote in the Life article. "Pleasant and simple" is how Dixon depicts the hamlet, noting its large families, most of whom were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He suggests growth could come to the mostly farming-based community, adding: "The world outside is reaching toward Gunlock."

But it was the description of Toquerville, which is 20 miles northeast of St. George, that helped raise a ruckus with some of Utah's LDS residents. Dixon wrote the people of this small, quiet town live a "lofty, lonely faith" where the children have gone away. "They painted it as a ghost town," Swensen says.

Reports of the time note Life received complaints about the essay. The photographers had contributed more than 100 images to Life , and only about one-third were published, mostly those by Lange. BYU eventually bought for its collection several of Lange's photos from the Utah shoot, while others are owned by the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City.

A new lens in town

Half a century later, the story is reversed in Toquerville. Instead of an aging community, Hedengren encountered a legion of small children, and the families embraced his photo shoots.

Trish Mertel, a Toquerville resident, said the relaxed town still holds to some rural ways. "A lot of 'old school' stuff is taught and handed down to our children here, which is really wonderful," says Mertel, who lived in California before returning to her family's roots in the region. "From the big city, you don't learn anything but how to go shopping. And here, there is no shopping."

A Life headline described St. George as a town with 'worldly ways,' catering to folks as a highway stop amid 23 motels. Now the number of local hotels have nearly doubled, serving a variety of vibrant communities.

But it's Gunlock, still unincorporated, that didn't live up to earlier headlines extolling its youthfulness, according to the camera eye of Hedengren, who caught a laid-back but resilient life, in a place with only 74 families in the entire ZIP code, according to the 2000 census.

Still life on display

Hedengren believes the LDS faith helps bind together the region he portrays. "Mormonism has a very good way of building communities out of really, nothing," the photograper says, as he sits in the stands of Gunlock's long-standing rodeo arena. It's an area, he points out, that has become more of a bedroom community than rural cooperative.

Hedengren is in the final stages of a photographic book to be published by the BYU Religious Studies Center. "The Mormons" is part of his long-term project of capturing LDS life around the globe, particularly mission work. Some of his Washington County photos are likely to be included in the book.

As he works to depict the still life of three Utah towns, Hedengren says there's interest in mounting an exhibition of his photo essay, possibly later this year.

Among the photos you might see at that exhibition are from a July day at the Sand Hollow reservoir just outside of St. George, when Hedengren climbed the rocks to shoot teenagers diving into the water.

It was another hot, wet shoot for Hedengren, who hopes to make a splash like any documentarian with a flash and a yen to be seen.