Abbot, Griffith Evans, 1850-1927

A traveler, archaeologist, and photographer, Désiré Charnay (1828-1915) was born in Fleur-sur-l'Arbesle, France, on May 2, 1828. After completing his education at the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris in 1850, Charnay accepted a teaching position in New Orleans, and it was there that he first encountered John Lloyd Stephen's enormously popular Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1841) and Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (1843), which included some of the earliest photographic illustrations (woodcuts based on daguerreotypes) of the famous Mayan archaeological sites in Yucatan.

Inspired by Stephens, and tired of teaching, Charnay returned to France, and in April 1857, secured a commission from the Ministry of Public Instruction to travel to Yucatan and document its archaeological riches. Surprised, he wrote, by the incomplete manner in which previous explorers had dealt with the ruins, he stated that he intended to take it upon himself to make a deeper and more detailed study. Convinced that he could use the precision of scientific photography to allay public doubts about the accuracy of his findings, Charnay undertook a crash course in Paris to learn the rudiments of photography. After acquiring a basic proficiency in the difficult wet plate collodion process, he made a test run, taking a brief photographic tour of the Saint Lawrence River during which he photographed Montmorency, Quebec, and Niagara Falls. Yet it was not until he arrived in Oaxaca that he put himself to the full test as a photographer.

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