Désiré Charnay was a French archeologist who was inspired by John Lloyd Stephens’s publication Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (1843), and set out for Mexico in 1858 to study the ancient Mayan life and culture there. He gained government sponsorship to fund his travel, and he learned the photographic process shortly before his departure so that he could document the artifacts through the new medium of photography. Upon his arrival, Charnay hired a team of assistants to transport his crates of materials (including quantities of large glass negatives, bottles of chemicals, and a darkroom tent) and to help him find his way through the jungle. Combating the hardships of rain, heat, civil conflict, tough terrain, and even swarms of insects, Charnay and his assistants visited Palenque, Mitla, Izamal, Chichén-Itzá, and Uxmal. When encountering Chichén-Itzá, the photographer took several views of the impressive ruins there, especially those that showed the fascinating disintegrating effects of time on the stone architecture.

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