Salt Lake City
December 2025
Is it possible to experience culture shock in one’s own country? For non-Mormon Americans, Utah represents the best opportunity to feel like a stranger in your own land.
Our vacation to Utah was ostensibly about Park City (set #4). But since this was my first-ever time on the slopes, we decided to hedge our bets by diversifying our activities in case I hated skiing. To that end we spent two days in Salt Lake City, exploring the town, hiking (set #2), and visiting a few museums (set #3).
Temple Square dominates Salt Lake City’s downtown in a way that no other massive religious complex occupies an American city. Comprised of the Temple, Tabernacle, conference center, genealogy center, and multiple libraries, museums, and visitor centers, the Square is the focal point of SLC. The obvious comparison is to the Vatican in Rome, though at a different scale in terms of artistic and international import.
Our tour began at the imposing LDS Church Office Building, the administrative headquarters of the Mormon church and the third-tallest structure in the city. In Salt Lake City, nearly everything traces back to Brigham Young, and this building is no exception: its architect, George C. Young, was one of his 204 grandchildren. That lineage footnote is especially relevant given how central record-keeping is to LDS theology, and it is no coincidence that the church’s genealogy center is only steps away. With its International Style and van der Rohe–inflected lines, the tower stands in stark contrast to the adjacent Salt Lake Temple, the largest in Mormonism. Unfortunately the Temple was undergoing renovation, its spires swallowed by scaffolding.
Despite the domination of Salt Lake City by LDS buildings, the rest of the city is functionally familiar with just enough weirdness to serve as a reminder that you are not in a strictly Normal Place.
Consider the bars, which do exist. But their doors, by law, must be labeled with “This Is A Bar.” SLC flips Magritte’s famous caption on its head, and somehow becomes more surreal in the process. In these bars, alcohol is carefully metered by state-mandated devices that measure every pour. Cocktails can only have a certain amount of alcohol in them, though you’ll still pay $20 for the privilege. If a restaurant sells alcohol, every guest must order food in order to be served a drink.
There is a great coffee scene, too, though coffee is haram in LDS custom. But apparently it’s not the caffeine that makes coffee a sin, because Utah is awash in dirty soda shops. Pick a base (Diet Coke), add flavor syrups (vanilla and coconut) and a creamer (coconut milk), and you can appropriate the Utahn tradition of drinking sunscreen in the dead of winter.
Salt Lake City ultimately feels less like a theocracy than a messily erased chalkboard, where layers of religion, regulation, and the mundanity of secular life overlap without fully blending. The city looks familiar at first glance, but the internal tensions beneath the surface create a sense of culture shock. To photograph it is to document a place explaining itself, sometimes implicitly and sometimes by law.
Recipe: Classic Cuban Negative
Utah Photosets:
Salt Lake City
Hikes
Museums
Park City
