Solola
Eadweard J. Muybridge
American, born England. 1830–1904
1875
A wide-view albumen silver print by Eadweard Muybridge that frames the hillside town of Sololá, Guatemala, balancing a weathered foreground tree and three observers with the village, lake, and distant volcanoes to record place and people from a lookout.
What first strikes the eye is the dramatic foreground—a contorted, sun-bleached tree and three small figures—set against a broad, receding panorama of tiled roofs, terraced fields, a shimmering lake, and cloud-wreathed mountains that melt into the distance.
Made during Muybridge’s Central American travels before his motion studies, this photograph exemplifies 19th‑century albumen landscape work that helped shape Western visual knowledge of distant places and the use of photography for topographical and ethnographic documentation.
Medium
Albumen silver print
Dimensions
5 1/2 × 9 1/8" (13.9 × 23.2 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Transferred from The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York
Accession
182.1964.72
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
