Maya Ruins Revisited: In the Footsteps of Teobert Maler highlights the visual record of an often-overlooked pioneer of Maya studies, the German photographer and Mayanist Teobert Maler. Maler's contributions, overshadowed by earlier Western explorers of Maya sites such as John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, Alfred Maudslay, and Désiré Charnay, receive their due in Maya Ruins Revisited. Undertaken with a photographer's eye for detail, William Frej visually illustrates the importance of Maler's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographs of cities that had been untouched for centuries. These photographs, often paired with Frej's images taken a century or more later, show over 70 Maya sites upon their rediscovery, before decades of looting or restoration altered them beyond recognition. This excellent collection of photographs and essays will delight scholars, students, and Maya enthusiasts alike.
Introductory essays, most of them succinct, situate the photographs and captions within the developing field of photography, surveys...
