Graphic and Photographic Documentation - Reed College

15 are of Uxmal and 2 of Kabah. In addition to the standard bibliography, the author
includes a list of publications by Charnay, helpfully presented in chronological order.
There is also a condensation of the catalogue of the Charnay negatives in the
collection of the Musée de L’Homme, Paris.
Debroise, Olivier
Mexican Suite: A History of Photography in Mexico. Translated and revised in collaboration
with the author by Stella de Sá Rego. Austin: university of Texas Press, 2001 (translated
from the Spanish, Fuga Maxicana: Un recorrido por la fotografia en México, Consejo
Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994).
This handsome volume provides an excellent survey of photography in Mexico, from
the 1840s, when the earliest daguerreotypes were made in Mexico, to the present
day. The 11 chapters are organized thematically, following a general chronological
order.
Only 20 of the 261 pages are devoted to a chapter on photographers of Maya ruins,
19 th and 20 th centuries, stressing the relationship of romanticism and scientific
reporting. There is only slight mention of the Puuc region, most notably in a statement
of Teobert Maler, especially appropriate for this web site:
“In the year 1888, a group of Americans – a so-called commission from Harvard
College in Boston – arrived . . . . First they attacked the large pyramid that served as
the base for the great temple, undermining it in the belief that the buttresses and
structural elements placed by the ancient peoples in earlier times to reinforce the
foundation of their temple were mere rubble. . . . the result is that today the superb
temple of Labná, weakened at its base, may collapse at any moment. Not content
with this feat, the ‘artists’ then directed themselves toward the great avenue of the
temple, digging up an area the size of the plaza in Mérida, always in search of
antiquities . . . Having left that part of Labná in such a state that it looked as if the
catastrophe that blew up the island of Krakatao . . . had been repeated there in front
of the temple, they left . . . . “
Desmond, Lawrence G.
“The Application of Close-Range Photogrammetry to Archaeology: Chichén Itzá and
Uxmal, Yucatán, México, 1989”. Seventh Palenque Round Table, 1989. Virginia M. Fields,
volume editor: 43-48. Merle Greene Robertson, general editor. San Francisco: Pre-
Columbian Art Research Institute, 1994.
On the web at:
http://maya.csuhayward.edu/archaeoplanet/LgdPage/Adivino94Paper.htm
(accessed 2008 Jan. 13)
Report on “a close-range photogrammetric field study that was carried out in March
1989 at” La Iglesia at Chichén Itzá and the Adivino Pyramid (Pyramid of the Magician)
at Uxmal. The purpose of the study was not to learn anything new about these
structures (no new information regarding the Pyramid of the Magician resulted), but
rather “to test the ability of archaeologists, only minimally trained in close-range
photogrammetry, to successfully document” archaeological structures. The study
20