Abbot-Charnay Photograph Collection 1859-1882

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Abbot-Charnay Photograph Collection 1859-1882

http://www.amphilsoc.org/mole/view?docId=ead/Mss.913.72.Ab23-ead.xml

A traveler, archaeologist, and photographer, Désiré Charnay (1828-1915) was one of the most important early expeditionary photographers. During his tours of Yucatan, Oaxaca, and Chiapas in 1858-1860 and 1880-1886, Charnay became one of the first to use photography in documenting the great Meso-American archaeological sites and to make ethnographic photographs of indigenous Mexicans. His major publications (Paris, 1862) and (Paris, 1885) are important transitional works to the later scientific archaeology of Alfred Maudslay. The collection of photographs taken by Desire Charnay are representative of the range of images he took of Meso-American archaeological sites during three tours of Mexico in 1858-1860 and 1880-1886. Although some of the images have suffered an unfortunate degree of fading, they convey the power and fascination that these sites held for Charnay and his contemporaries, and include some of the best early examples of the use of photography in the documentation of Mexican archaeology. The collection includes 123 images of the sites at Tula, Teotihuacan, Iztaccihuatl, Chichen Itza, Comalcalco, and Palenque, of archaeological specimens held at the Museum of Mexico, and of landscape and villages in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, as well as a series of Lacandon, Mayan, Mixtec, and Yucatec "racial types." Cités et Ruines Américaines Les Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde

2.0 Linear feet, 123 photographs

American Philosophical Society

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SNAC Resource ID: 6631217

Related Entities

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Abbot, Griffith Evans, 1850-1927

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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 p...

Garreaud, E. y cia.

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Charnay, Désiré 1828-1915

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Claude-Joseph-Désiré Charnay was a French photographer, archaeologist, and writer, best known for his travels and photographs of early South and Central American sites. Born in Fleurie, he travelled to New Orleans, where he became a teacher. He travelled extensively throughout Mexico and Central and South America, pioneering the use of photography to document his journeys and discoveries. He made several important finds, and published numerous books about his discoveries, as well as translatio...

Camacho, J. F.

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Courret, E.

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Museo Nacional de México.

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Establecimiento fotografico

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Courret Hermanos

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Unidentified photographer

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Vicente

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