First known photo of LDS founder Joseph Smith discovered

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The historian’s first impression was that the man staring at him from the 1844 metal daguerreotype was not Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith.

To Lachlan Mackay, an apostle with the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and Smith’s great-great-great-grandson, the image did not seem to match the view of the Mormon prophet depicted in an 1842 oil portrait that had been circulating since the 19th century. The eyes were more sunken than in the painting. The eyebrows were more rounded and the lips less full.

After an exhaustive 18 months of research and analysis, however, Mackay is convinced it is the first known picture of the man who said he saw God and Jesus in a New York woods as a boy and launched a global movement, including both Mackay’s church and the larger, Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“This isn’t surprising since Emma Smith herself [Smith’s wife] didn’t think the portrait was a good likeness of her husband,” Mackay said in an interview from his home in Nauvoo, Ill., “and that a good portrait of him couldn’t be painted because his countenance was changing all the time.”

Today that daguerreotype and the story of its discovery by another Smith direct descendant, Daniel Larsen, are being published and explained in an extensive article in the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. It is titled “Hidden Things Shall Come to Light: The Visual Image of Joseph Smith Jr.”

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