Graphic and Photographic Documentation - Reed College

The authors provide a rare and valuable review of types of imaging used in the
documentation of Maya sculpture. They first describe a few of the early attempts to
record Maya sculpture. They write that Stephens and Catherwood succeeded in
accumulating a record of extraordinary excellence”, but add that “Catherwood’s
drawings are by no means adequate for modern studies, and today they are to be
valued mostly for their antiquarian charm and as works of art in their own right”. They
fail to mention the importance of Catherwood’s drawings as records of the state of
Maya ruins in 1839 and 1841; Graham and Fitch especially praise A. P. Maudslay as
“[laying] the foundations for modern studies of Maya art and epigraphy”. Maudslay’s
“drawings were prepared on the basis of photographs, casts, and field notes, and then
were often checked against the originals in the field”. The authors write that
“regrettably the superlative standards of Maudslay were not emulated in subsequent
recording of Maya sculpture . . . Fortunately, however, recent years witness a renewed
effort at careful and painstaking photography and drawing of Maya monuments, as in
the work of the University Museum’s Tikal project and the Maya text recording project
of Ian Graham under auspices of Peabody Museum, Harvard” (quotations on pp. 41
and 42).
Graham and Fitch note that John H. Denison was the first to apply the technique of
rubbings in Maya field studies, but that “only in recent years a significant and large
scale effort to record Maya sculpture with an advanced rubbing process has been
initiated by Merle Greene Robertson. The authors are exceptional in observing that
“clearly depending in no small degree upon the artistic sensitivity of Mrs. Robertson,
an invaluable an amazingly successful evocation of the original qualities of the
sculpture” has emerged (p. 43).
In another rarely noted observation, in this case about line drawings, Graham and
Fitch write that “literal line drawings, even when attaining a high and commendable
level of accuracy and thus being invaluable for iconographic and similar inquiries, are
seldom useful or even useable for purposes of critical or esthetic studies. The problem
of sensitive and effective translation from the three dimensions of relief or sculpture to
the two dimensions of drawing are almost insurmountable in simple, direct line
drawing” (p. 43).
The last 2-1/2 pages describe the nature and importance of photogrammetry as a
“method of easily recording Maya sculpture in such a manner that casts can always be
made when needed and which has negligible requirements of space for storage” (p.
44). Unfortunately, they repeat the common claim that in photography “from this
stereoscopic pair of photographs all the three dimensional information of the subject
can be obtained” (p. 44). In a 1-1/2 page appendix, the authors describe how a
contour map or a contoured plaster replica can be generated from the stereo pair of
photographs.
Greene, Merle (see also Robertson, Merle Greene)
Ancient Maya Relief Sculpture. Rubbings by Merle Greene. Introduction and notes by J.
Eric S. Thompson. New York: Museum of Primitive Art, 1967 (unpaged).
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