Graphic and Photographic Documentation - Reed College

an essential, first-hand account, by the scholar most continuously involved in the
overall project. He relates the recent stereo-photogrammetry project to the stereo
photography of the Le Plongeon.
Desmond, Lawrence Gustave, and Phyllis Mauch Messenger, foreword
by Jamie Litvak King
A Dream of Maya: Augustus and Alice Le Plongeon in Nineteenth-Century Yucatán.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.
Also on the web, but without the illustrations, at:
http://maya.csuhayward.edu/archaeoplanet/LgdPage/Dream/Start.htm
(accessed 2006 Dec. 15)
Based partly on Desmond’s 1983 doctoral dissertation for the University of Colorado,
Boulder, this is the only thorough study of the careers and research of Augustus Le
Plongeon and his wife Alice, who in particular receives here her first scholarly
recognition. There are separate, lengthy bibliography listing for Alice (23 items) and
Augustus (26 items), including newspaper articles and some letters. Chapter 9, “Life
in the Governor’s Palace,” describes their main stay to Uxmal, June and July 1881.
The authors describe how, In the process of attempting to find evidence for their
already discredited theories regarding Maya history, the Le Plongeon produced the
best inventory to date for the buildings and sculpture at Uxmal, extensive glass-plate
photography and molds of relief and high-relief sculpture to record small iconographic
details not visible in their photographs. The molds included eighty-three molds of the
Governor’s Palace frieze and forty-three molds of the sculptured reliefs on the
Pyramid of the Magician.
The Le Plongeon’s photographs are especially noteworthy. The authors note that,
using stereo photographs, which help to capture the 3-dimensionality of the sculpture,
Augustus recorded the entire front (eastern) frieze of the Governor’s Palace in sixteen
sections, taken from top of a long ladder, supported by saplings, in order to capture
the frieze straight on. He also took distant and close-up photographs of the Pyramid of
the Magician and, from its top, an almost 180 degree panorama including the
Governor’s Palace and Nunnery Quadrangle. Eighteen small grey-scale illustrations
of their photographs at Uxmal are included. In a caption to the photograph of the
Nunnery East Building on page 78, the authors mistakenly write that “in this straighton
treatment of the East Building of the Nunnery Quadrangle, Augustus controlled his
line of sight to keep the Adivino Pyramid from looking in the background”; whereas
this photograph is an early example of image manipulation, replacing the Advino
Pyramid with sky.
Alice especially spoke out against the ongoing removal of the limestone blocks and
finely finished stone facing of Uxmal buildings, sometimes with crowbars, by the
landowners and administrators for construction of their farmhouses and haciendas.
Desmond, Lawrence G., Patrick Collins, Tomás Gallareta Negrón, and
James Callaghan
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