Cerro del Carmen, Guatemala
Eadweard J. Muybridge
American, born England. 1830–1904
1875
A panoramic albumen silver print by Eadweard Muybridge that documents the hilltop church and surrounding settlement of Cerro del Carmen in Guatemala, made as part of his 1875 photographic survey to record landscape and architecture.
What strikes you is the church’s pale, compact silhouette set high above a broad, shadowed foreground of fields and low buildings, the wide tonal gradations and distant mountain ridge giving the scene a calm, measured depth.
This 1875 photograph illustrates how 19th‑century travel and topographical photography used albumen prints to produce precise visual records of distant places, shaping viewers’ knowledge of other lands and marking an important phase in Muybridge’s career before his famous motion studies.
Medium
Albumen silver print
Dimensions
5 3/8 × 9 3/8" (13.6 × 23.8 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Transferred from The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York
Accession
182.1964.40
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
