NEW YORK, NY.- Throckmorton Fine Art is presenting an exhibit of 42 photographs that explore the landscape of Latin America dating from 1850 to the year 2000.

“T I E R R A……Photographs of Latin America’s Landscapes” features photographs united by a prominent theme in Latin American photography: the portrayal of the architectural remains of the region’s pre-Columbian civilizations. The photographs capture specific places at a moment of time, but they also are evocative of the passing of time, and so the unfolding of Latin America’s history.

“T I E R R A……Photographs of Latin American Landscapes” is on view from June 28 through September 15 at Throckmorton Fine Art on East 57th Street in New York.

Spencer Throckmorton says that among the most emblematic images in the exhibition is Manuel Álvarez Bravo photograph of a child in Tulum standing solemnly next to a stucco Maya head. In another photograph, Álvarez Bravo produces a portrait of a Maya ruler carved in stone that is so intimate as to be almost life-like; it is surreal. Other photographs, including by the noted Peruvian, Martín Chambi, have a quietness that invites introspection.

“All of the photographs included in the exhibit, individually and collectively, attest to the greatness of Latin America. The words of the Mexican photographer, Hugo Brehme (who is amply represented in the show), for the prologue of his book published in 1923, speak for the photographs in this exhibit: The photographs that illustrate the present work are clear proof that the Mexican Nation has a glorious and venerable ancestry and deserves to be placed at the front of Humanity.

“Similarly, the photographer Martín Chambi, who himself was of Indian heritage, is celebrated for bestowing dignity on the Quechua-speaking indigenous peoples of the former Inca empire of his adopted city, Cuzco. All of the photographs exhibited are beautiful, but they also have a historical role in documenting and celebrating the places and peoples of Latin America.”

The photographers whose work is included in the exhibit include early pioneers Teobert Maler, Désiré Charnay, A. P. Maudslay, Abel Briquet, and C. B. Waite. There are also works shown by noted twentieth century photographers: Hugo Brehme, Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Laura Gilpin, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Mario Algaze, and Marilyn Bridges. Taken together, the photographs offer a rewarding window into select corners of Latin America.

Several images from the 1850s are by Claude-Joseph Desire Charnay, a French archeologist known for the pioneering use of photography to document his discoveries in Mexico and Central America. The more important of his publications are Le Mexique, souvenirs et impressions de voyage (1863), being his personal report on the expedition of 1857-1861, of which the official report is to be found in Viollet-le-Duc's Cités et ruines américaines: Mitla, Palenqué, Izamal, Chichén-Itzá, Uxmal (1863).

In the 1890s Abel Briquet created a series of photographs of Mexico, including the viaduct in Barranca, and C.B. Waite photographed the Grounds below Chapultepec Castle, in 1880, and the Gateway of Maximilian’s Home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the 1890s.

A century later Marilyn Bridges shot aerial images of Teotihuacan, Mazca, and Tulum, while in the 1930s Laura Gilpin photographed the Temple of the Three Lintels in Chichen Itza, a Ball Court Goal there, a Mayan child and the striking Steps of Castillow in the Yucatan. Edward Weston created photographs of a Mitla detail in 1925 and in 1926 a Theological sculpture of a Serpent Head.