Tulúm, after Catherwood (The Castle) [Tulúm, a la manera de Catherwood (El Castillo)]

In the nineteenth century, John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood were the first English-speaking travelers to explore the regions originally settled by the Maya in the Yucatan, Chiapas, Guatemala, and Honduras. Using drawings and a camera lucida, they documented ancient monuments that rivaled the famous ruins of Egypt. Though the Maya sites were already well known to local populations and Mexican scholars, Catherwood’s romantic renderings and travel accounts made this supposedly “forgotten civilization” world famous. In a body of work he titled The Catherwood Series, Leandro Katz reconstructed the expeditions, photographing the Maya sites from the same vantage points Catherwood used to draw them. Including a view of his own hand holding Catherwood’s published engravings, Katz draws attention to his own performance of re-“discovery.” The comparison reveals not only the effects of archaeological restoration and the passage of time, but also the colonial gaze that informed Catherwood’s compositions.