The collection of photographs taken by Desire Charnay are representative of the range of images he took of Meso-American archaeological sites during three tours of Mexico in 1858-1860 and 1880-1886. Although some of the images have suffered an unfortunate degree of fading, they convey the power and fascination that these sites held for Charnay and his contemporaries, and include some of the best early examples of the use of photography in the documentation of Mexican archaeology. The collection includes 123 images of the sites at Tula, Teotihuacan, Iztaccihuatl, Chichen Itza, Comalcalco, and Palenque, of archaeological specimens held at the Museum of Mexico, and of landscape and villages in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, as well as a series of Lacandon, Mayan, Mixtec, and Yucatec "racial types."

The photographs are albumen prints, most of which were made from wet plate collodion negatives (for the earlier expedition) or dry plate (in the latter), and are mounted on two different types of mount, a standard white cardboard mount with thin black line bordering and a thinner green board. Each includes and hand-written title on the mount in French, and several are marked in pencil "Charnay." It seems probable that the prints were prepared from the negatives during a relatively narrow period of time, probably in the 1880s, but possibly as late as the turn of the century.

The collection was apparently assembled by the scientist Griffith Evans Abbot (1850-1927), who presented them to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The 15 cartes de visite included in the collection, mostly portraits taken in Peru, Chile, and Madeira, bear an uncertain relationship to the Charnay images, and are probably present simply because they were also once owned by Abbot. Although most are simple studio portraits, there are two interesting cartes depicting Hollways Hotel and the "Manner of carrying invalid" in Madeira, and two ethnographic type images, one of natives from Funchal, Madeira, and one of a "Choloe" [sic] type from Peru. One of the cartes from Madeira has an inscription indicating that it was presented by Lt. Frederick Schober, USN, in 1904.

All of the images from this collection have been digitized. Links to the digital versions of the images are included in the inventory. You may also view a gallery of all images here.