5. Fourteen books by Desmond.

MMARP scholars wearing Polaroid glasses to view Le Plongeon 19th century photos of Chichen itza in 3D stereo. Templo Mayor Museum. Pic: L. G. Desmond. 1989. Courtesy of the Getty Research Institute collection 2014.R.16.

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–All pages of books can be fully viewed by clicking their titles–

2008 and 2^nd edition 2015 The John Muir Trail: From Florence Lake to Cedar Grove, 1962. San Francisco: Blurb Publishing. Co-authored by Kenneth L. Parker. 94 pages. 70 photos, landscape 8×10.” An account of a two-week backpacking trip on the John Muir Trail in the days when no permits were required and we met 8 other hikers. With maps, campsite locations, and photos.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley.

2012 Blue Water and Rocky Lights: My life in the U.S. Coast Guard, 1957-1960. San Francisco: Blurb Publishing. 66 pages. 120 photos, landscape 8×10.” A memoir of three years on active duty in the US Coast Guard with historic photos of St. George Reef Lighthouse, Coast Guard cutters, crews, daily activities, amusing stories, and rescues at sea.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the U.S. Coast Guard Historian Office, Forestville, MD.

2013 The San Francisco Peace March, Vietnam War Moratorium, November 15, 1969: A Photographic memoir. San Francisco: Blurb Publishing. 48 pages. 43 photos, landscape 8×10.” Photos taken on Geary Street and in Polo Fields of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco during the Vietnam War Moratorium march in 1969.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley.

2013 Tepetzintla, Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico 1972. San Francisco: Blurb Publishing. 124 pages. 119 photos, landscape 8×10.” Color and black-and-white photos of the landscape, village, people, and dances in the Mexican village of Tepetzintla in the Sierra Norte of the state of Puebla during Easter Week 1972.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.

2013 Santo Tomás Jalieza, Oaxaca, Mexico 1973. San Francisco: Blurb Publishing. 76 pages. 65 photos landscape 8×10.” The color and black-and-white photos of Santo Tomás in 1973 are of village life and the people while I was doing an ethnography for my degree at the Universidad de las Americas.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.

2014 Mexico- As it was. Photographs of life in the 1970s. San Francisco: Blurb Publishing. 144 pages. 139 photos, landscape 8×10.” The photographs in this book were taken in the early 1970s during visits to the cities and villages of the mountainous dry highlands, and humid tropical lowlands of Mexico. They show life before the rapid social and economic changes of the final two decades of the 20th century.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.

2014 Mexico- Landscape and Architecture. San Francisco: Blurb Publishing. 124 pages. 114 photos, landscape 8×10.” In the 1970s I took advantage of days off from classes at the Universidad de las Americas in Cholula to travel around Mexico with family and friends to take photos of Colonial churches, archaeological sites, and modern cities with my Leicaflex SL.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.

2014 Growing up in California, 1947-1959. Toy Racers and Giant Salamanders. San Francisco: Blurb Publishing. 142 pages. 123 photos, landscape 8×10.” This book is about my first years of photography that began in 1947 in the small town of San Carlos, California on the San Francisco Peninsula. The earliest photos range from childhood friends, family life to vacations in Yosemite and Yellowstone parks, and finishes with photos from high school, college, and my four years in the Coast Guard. By following the thread of my photos I attempt to understand how my photographic technique and style evolved during my younger years.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley.

2014 An Unintentional Photographer, 1968-1970. Mirrored Rooms and Chain-link Fences. 162 pages. 143 photos, landscape 8×10.” The photos in this book were taken between 1968 and 1970, and are grouped into four Parts: 1) Cityscapes and other Elements- San Francisco; 2) People- San Francisco, Sausalito and south to Ladera, and Cholula, Mexico; 3) Natural Abstracts, Landscapes, Flora and a Frog- The Far West; and 4) Outside and Inside the Universidad de las Americas- Cholula, Mexico. Around 1969 I noticed advertisements for photo workshops offered by Ansel Adams and Pirkle Jones, and thought the workshops would be a way to improve my skills. As with the book of my earliest photos I follow their thread to understand changes in my photographic technique and style during just prior to my years in Mexico in the early 1970s.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley.

2014 Scholars in Dark Glasses. Photos of MMARP Symposia 1982 to 1994. 192 pages, 165 photos, front-back covers panorama, landscape 8×10.” The Introduction discusses the development and holdings of the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project (MMARP) Templo Mayor Photo Archive, provides some historical background about the MMARP, and details about the symposia photos.

The photos selected for this book are from the Lawrence Gustave Desmond Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project Photographs collection archived at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (GRI Special Collections accession number 2014.R.16).

2015 A searchable catalog of the 19th Century Photographs of Alice Dixon and Augustus Le Plongeon 363 pages, portrait 10 x 8 inches.

This book is a catalog of 1,034 photographs taken by Alice Dixon and Augustus Le Plongeon in Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize from 1873 to 1885. The subjects photographed are: Landscapes, Colonial and ancient Maya architecture, portraits, and ethnographic photos.

The original photos are archived at: The American Museum of Natural History, the Donald Dixon album in London, the Getty Research Institute, the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, and the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. Duplicates of the photos were made with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (Grant RT-20746), and the duplicates can be viewed in the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in the “Lawrence G. Desmond collection of Augustus Le Plongeon and Alice Dixon Le Plongeon Photographs.” Collection ID number: 5268.

2019 Santo Tomás Jalieza, Oaxaca, Mexico: An ethnographic study. 120 pages, 83 photos, maps, plans, and tables. Portrait: 10×8 inches.

It was during my second year of graduate studies in anthropology at the Universidad de las Américas in Cholula, Mexico that I began to plan fieldwork for my master’s thesis. I had come to the university in 1970 to study the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica and learn archaeology, but the chairman of the department of anthropology was a cultural anthropologist, and he had other ideas for my thesis. His plan was that I should carry out an ethnographic study of a small farming community in one of the valleys south of Oaxaca City rather than an archaeological study.

So, with the help of my then wife Gail and her son Chris I began research at Santo Tomás Jalieza in 1973 that lasted around four months, and resulted in this sociocultural or ethnographic study.

It includes an accumulation of considerable descriptive material useful for gaining a basic understanding of village life, but the most important finding was that after decades of debate and compromise a weaving cooperative was established in the village. The process of founding the cooperative  led to the practice of resolving social and economic conflict by discussion, debate, and compromise rather than by the violence that is said to have been endemic in the area until around the mid-20th century.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.

  2020  The Akab Dzib Project, Chichén Izá, Yucatán, Mexico- 1977, 1978, 1980 . 74 pages, 28 photos, maps, and plans. Landscape: 10×8 inches.

 The Akab Dzib was constructed of stone by the ancient Maya in late AD 800, and located about 120 meters southeast of the Caracol (Observatory) at Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, Mexico.

      This book is a report about research in 1977, fieldwork in 1978, and excavation of what is called the core of the Akab Dzib in 1980 to determine how it was constructed, and its purpose. A second goal was to detect any buried chambers or rooms within the core.
      Excavation determined that the core was constructed by the Maya with large limestone slabs from a nearby quarry as a foundation for additional structures, but those structures were never built. And, no additional architectural features were detected within the core, but they may exist because only 21 cubic meters of the core’s 1,700 cubic meters was investigated.
     Now, forty years after excavation of the core, the next generation of archaeologists has the opportunity to increase our knowledge of the core’s purpose by exploring every cubic meter of it with digital imaging generated by a newly developed technology– Electronic Resistivity Tomography (ERT-3D).

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond Collection in the photo archive of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane University.

2020 A comparative study of 1870s and 1980s photographs of Maya architecture at Chichén Itzá and Uxmal, Yucatán, Mexico by Lawrence G. Desmond | Blurb Books 106 pages, 52 photos, maps, and plans. Landscape: 10×8 inches. Printed 2020.

After evaluating Alice Dixon and Augustus Le Plongeon’s 1870s photos of ancient Maya architecture at Chichén Itzá and Uxmal it seemed imperative to initiate a project to compare them to my 1980s photos, and in that way make them available to historians of architecture, art historians, archaeologists, conservators, and anyone with an interest in the ancient Maya.
To take comparative photos of the architecture required that photographic prints of the Le Plongeon photos at Chichén Itzá and Uxmal from archives be assembled, and brought to the sites for replication by photographing from the same distance, direction, and elevation.

This book compares 26 photos of Chichén Itzá and 18 photos of Uxmal in Yucatán, Mexico taken by Alice Dixon and Augustus Le Plongeon in the 1870s to photos taken by Desmond of the same architectural subjects in 1980.

Photos selected for this book are from the Desmond and Le Plongeon Collections in the photo archive of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.