Maya Ruins Revisited: In the Footsteps of Teobert Maler

Abstract

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 of Maya sites, and advances in Mayanist scholarship from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. Essays by Alma Durán-Merk and Stephan Merk, Tomás Gallareta Negrón, Jeremy A. Sabloff, and Khristaan D. Villela contextualize the high-quality images with a biography of Maler, a brief sketch of Frej's career, and an overview of the Maya urban life of the Classic and Postclassic periods; Frej provides an introduction as photographer. Sabloff's concise survey of Maya urbanism across several millennia distills a leading Mayanist's knowledge into ten approachable pages, accessible to nonspecialists. Its up-to-date interpretations provide a framework for the Maya architecture in Frej's photographs. Merk and Durán-Merk open a window on the somewhat reclusive figure whose photography gave many in the world their first glimpse of many Maya sites off the beaten path. The coauthors of this chapter piece together the globe-trotting life of the German photographer and former officer in Maximilian's army and his wide-ranging travels throughout the Maya world. Using source materials such Maler's papers and memoirs, Merk and Durán-Merk re-create the adventures of Maler far from his birthplace in Rome. Though Frej has lived a less sensational life, his contributions to the field of Maya studies are no less impressive, as Villela details. Finally, a “further reading” section on page 288 offers a brief list of additional sources for readers wishing to learn more.However, most of the pages are filled with Frej's high-quality photographs of Maya sites, from the best-known and most visited Maya cities such as Chichén Itzá, Tikal, and Uxmal to remote locations only accessible by dirt trails or by boat, such as Dzibiltun in Yucatan and Topoxte in Petén. In many instances, Frej paired his recent photographs with Maler's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century images of the same site, often taken from the same or a similar angle. These pairings give readers a visual guide to the looting, decay, extensive restoration, and changes to the landscapes that have occurred between when Maler captured the state of the sites in the late nineteenth century and when Frej revisited them in the early twenty-first century. Even when Maler's photographs are not included for comparison, Frej's captions describe the erosion of facades, restorations of nonoriginal materials, and disappearing plaster and pigment.Maler's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photos contrasted with more recent images by Frej show changes to not only structures but also the surroundings. Maler's photos often contain Maya subjects in the foreground or maize fields cultivated near the sites, showing that while Maler may have been the first European to view the remains of major cities, Maya continued to live in the shadows of the lands of their ancestors. While these aspects of the photographic essay will benefit archaeologists and other Mayanists, even the casual reader will come away from reading Maya Ruins Revisited with a deeper appreciation of Maya art and architecture.Frej's diligence in compiling this outstanding book is commendable. By bringing together scholars from Germany, Mexico, and the United States to write concise introductory material, Frej has made this work accessible to readers from all levels of expertise in the Maya world. The final product is impressive, valuable, and informative and should be purchased by any Maya enthusiast or librarian who can afford to do so.