My Trips to the Yucatán and Guatemala in the early 1970s

When I started to work on these pictures, I had no intention of doing so many. As I worked, I found that I had depicted life in some of the Yucatán cities and towns as well as some of the outlying villages in Guatemala such as Chichicastenango., I decided to turn this into a study of daily life as well as show some of the Mayan Ruins.

When I was in Merida, in the Yucatán, I was befriended by a group of engineers who were working on a dredging project and their 16 year old chauffeur took me to his home town and the people allowed me to take their photos. I few of the photos are posed shots of children. When I went to see the ruins, I took public busses. At that point in my life, I could speak and understand Spanish.

A few years later, I accompanied my parents to Guatemala and the some cities in the Yucatan. We traveled to outlying cities in Guatemala and I was able to photograph some of the daily life. We also took a small plane to the Jungles of Tikal. I was there before their bad earthquake.

While I did shoot some color slides, most of the images were on Tri-X film at 400 ASA. Unfortunately, some of the slides started to decompose and some of the images on the black and white film were grainy. I have used the tools in Adobe Photoshop CS3 to work on each photograph.