EXPOSURE TO LIGHT
Prosecuting Polygamy
Leah Hogsten of the Salt Lake Tribune
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
Husband to five women, father to
twenty-nine children, Tom Green paraded his life-style on television
shows, piquing the interest of American audiences and the county
prosecutor, who charged Green with bigamy in April 2000. The Salt
Lake Tribune dispatched Leah
Hogsten to the Green household, a commune of mobile homes
in the Utah desert, to give readers a view into life there. The
family immediately welcomed Hogsten into their homes, even allowing
her to stay the night in their guest trailer. “It wasn’t
like any other family I’d ever seen,” Hogsten says.
Surrounded by the constant tumult of so many women and children,
there was “always something going on, everywhere at all times,”
she says. The thirty-year-old photographer discovered that her
work improved when she stopped looking through the lens of her
personal prejudices and simply took the shots. “You had to
say, ‘This is a unique family. I don’t have to agree
with them. But I’ll keep my eyes open.’” Hogsten
visited the family during various stages of the trial, taking
shots of Green leading up to and during his court hearing, and
photographing the family after he was convicted in May 2001 and
sentenced to up to five years in prison. Hogsten last saw the
Green family in April, still puzzled by some of their beliefs,
but appreciating what she could. “They’re all great
mothers,” she says. “They love their children."
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