Yucatan
through her Eyes Alice
Dixon Le Plongeon -- Writer and Expeditionary Photographer
Yucatan
through her Eyes
is an account
of the life of Alice Dixon Le Plongeon (1851-1910) who left London at age
19 in 1871 to explore, photograph, and write about the ancient and modern
Maya of Yucatan, Mexico.
The reader will see 19th century Yucatan through her eyes as she walked
and rode the dusty limestone roads, lived in a hammock for months in the
jungle, and climbed the pyramids at the ancient Maya cities of Chichen
Itza and Uxmal. She struggled with illness in the heat and humidity,
recorded the ruins with hundreds of 3D photos, wrote about the high-life
of elite hacienda owners and of the “slavery” of the poor, confronted directly
(sometimes with revolver in hand) the deadly social upheaval and warfare
in Yucatan, and later joined with like minded women in New York City to
work for social justice.
The book will be illustrated with 69 photos by Alice and Augustus Le Plongeon
that are from the photo collection of the Getty Research Institute in Los
Angeles. Included as part of the biography will be Alice's diary
that gives her own first hand account of her struggles, joys and sorrows
during her first three years of discovery in Yucatan. Read
more about the book and ordered it from the Spring 2009 catalog of the
University of New Mexico Press. Date
of release: April 2009. Size:
7x10 inches. 376
pages, 69 halftones, 3 maps. Hardcover
ISBN 978-0-8263-4595-0 $45
Lawrence
G. Desmond received
his Ph.D. in anthropology and archaeology from the University
of Colorado, Boulder, and has carried out research in Mesoamerica for
more than 30 years. He is a Senior Research Fellow in Archaeology
with the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project at Harvard University,
and a Research Associate with the Department of Anthropology at the California
Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
Acknowledgements: Archaeoplanet would
like to thank the students, staff, and faculty of the Department of Art
at California State University East Bay in Hayward, California for hosting
this web site.