When Hiram Bingham, a historian from Yale University, first saw
Machu Picchu in 1911, it was a ruin obscured by overgrowth whose
terraces were farmed a by few families. A century later, Machu
Picchu is a UNESCO world heritage site visited by more than a
million tourists annually. This remarkable transformation began
with the photographs that accompanied Bingham’s article published
in National Geographic magazine, which depicted Machu Picchu as a
lost city discovered. Focusing on the practices, technologies, and
materializations of Bingham’s three expeditions to Peru (1911,
1912, 1914–1915), this book makes a convincing case that
visualization, particularly through the camera, played a decisive
role in positioning Machu Picchu as both a scientific discovery and
a Peruvian heritage site. Amy Cox Hall argues that while
Bingham’s expeditions relied on the labor, knowledge, and support
of Peruvian elites, intellectuals, and peasants, the practice of
scientific witnessing, and photography specifically, converted
Machu Picchu into a cultural artifact fashioned from a distinct way
of seeing. Drawing on science and technology studies, she situates
letter writing, artifact collecting, and photography as important
expeditionary practices that helped shape the way we understand
Machu Picchu today. Cox Hall also demonstrates that the
photographic evidence was unstable, and, as images circulated
worldwide, the “lost city” took on different meanings,
especially in Peru, which came to view the site as one of national
patrimony in need of protection from expeditions such as
Bingham’s.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
