MACHU PICCHU BY HIRAM BINGHAM III

 HIRAM BINGHAM III (1875-1956) 

Machu Picchu (2,430 m -7,970 ft) 

Peru

Photo made in 1912 - original ruins before modern reconstruction 

The mountain and site 

Machu Picchu  is a 15th-century Inca citadel situated on a mountain ridge 2,430 m -7,970 ft above sea level. It is located in the Cusco Region, Urubamba Province, Machupicchu District in Peru, above the Sacred Valley, which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Machu Picchu lies in the southern hemisphere, 13.164 degrees south of the equator. It is 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Cusco, on the crest of the mountain Machu Picchu, located about 2,430 m-7,970 feet above mean sea level, over 1,000 m-3,300 ft lower than Cusco, which has an elevation of (3,600 m -11,800 ft. As such, it had a milder climate than the Inca capital. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in South America, one of the most visited tourist attractions in Latin America  and the most visited in Peru.

The city sits in a saddle between the two mountains Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu, with a commanding view down two valleys and a nearly impassable mountain at its back.

Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas" (a title more accurately applied to Vilcabamba), it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization. The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was not known to the Spanish during the colonial period and remained unknown to the outside world until American historian Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911.

Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Inti Watana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of how they originally appeared. By 1976, thirty percent of Machu Picchu had been restored[4] and restoration continues. Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll.

The photographer - explorer

Hiram Bingham III was an American academic, explorer and politician. He made public the existence of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in 1911 with the guidance of local indigenous farmers. Later, Bingham served as a member of the United States Senate for the state of Connecticut.
Bingham was not a trained archaeologist. Yet, it was during Bingham's time as a lecturer – later professor – in South American history at Yale that he re-discovered the largely forgotten Inca city of Machu Picchu. In 1908, he had served as delegate to the First Pan American Scientific Congress at Santiago, Chile. On his way home via Peru, a local prefect convinced him to visit the pre-Columbian city of Choquequirao. Bingham published an account of this trip in Across South America; an account of a journey from Buenos Aires to Lima by way of Potosí, with notes on Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru.
Bingham was thrilled by the prospect of unexplored Inca cities, and organized the 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition with one of its objectives to search for the last capital of the Incas. On July 24, 1911, Melchor Arteaga led Bingham to Machu Picchu, which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley, possibly including two local missionaries named Thomas Payne and Stuart McNairn whose are supposed to have already climbed to the ruins in 1906. Also the Cusco explorers Enrique Palma, Gabino Sanchez and Agustín Lizarraga are said to have arrived at the site in 1901. Bingham returned to Peru in 1912, 1914 and 1915 with the support of Yale and the National Geographic Society. In The Lost City of the Incas (1948), a bestseller upon its publication in 1948, Bingham related how he came to believe that Machu Picchu housed a major religious shrine and served as a training center for religious leaders. Modern archaeological research has since determined that the site was not a religious center but a royal estate to which Inca leaders and their entourage repaired during the Andean summer.
Machu Picchu has become one of the major tourist attractions in South America, and Bingham is recognized as the man who brought the site to world attention, although many others helped to bring this site into the public eye. The switchback-filled road that carries tourist buses to the site from the Urubamba River is called the Hiram Bingham Highway.
Bingham has been cited as one possible basis for the "Indiana Jones" character.
Peru has long sought the return of the estimated 40,000 artifacts, including mummies, ceramics and bones, that Bingham had excavated and exported from the Machu Picchu site. On September 14, 2007, an agreement was made between Yale University and the Peruvian government for the return of the objects. On April 12, 2008, the Peruvian government stated that it had revised previous estimates of 4,000 pieces up to 40,000.

MONT MACHU PICCHU PEINT PAR GEORGIA O' KEEFFE

GEORGIA O' KEEFFE (1887–1986)
Mont Machu Picchu (2 430m)
Pérou

In Machu Picchu, Morning Light (1957) Huile sur toile, 61 x 45.7 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago (Donation Rosenbaum)

Le site
Machu Picchu (2430m) du quechua machu pikchu, litt. « vieux sommet », est une ancienne cité inca du xve siècle au Pérou, perchée sur un promontoire rocheux qui unit les monts Machu Picchu et Huayna Picchu (« le Jeune Pic » en quechua) sur le versant oriental des Andes centrales. Son nom aurait été Pikchu ou Picho. Considérée comme une œuvre maîtresse de l'architecture inca , elle est peu à peu abandonnée après l'effondrement de l'Empire inca au XVIe siècle, puis méconnue durant des siècles en dehors de la population locale. Cela lui a conféré une réputation de « cité oubliée ». Machu Picchu fut explorée en 1911 par l'archéologue américain Hiram Bingham (1875-1956), professeur assistant d'histoire de l'Amérique latine à l'université Yale, qui la fit connaître dans un ouvrage de référence. Le site est généralement considéré comme une des résidences de l'empereur inca Pachacútec. Quelques-unes des plus grandes constructions et le caractère cérémonial de la principale voie d'accès au llaqta évoquent un sanctuaire religieux. En revanche, les experts ont écarté l'idée d'un ouvrage militaire. Au centre d'un ensemble culturel et naturel connu sous le nom de « Sanctuaire historique de Machu Picchu », le site est depuis 1983 sur la liste du patrimoine mondial de l'UNESCO et depuis le XXIe siècle une des destinations touristiques les plus visitées de la planète, suscitant des mesures de régulation du surtourisme.

La peintre
Georgia O’Keeffe est une peintre américaine considérée comme une des peintres modernistes et des précisionnistes majeures du xxe siècle. L'art de Georgia O'Keeffe, un temps considéré moderniste et d'avant-garde, est basé sur une observation minutieuse de la nature et sur sa volonté de peindre ce qu'elle ressent. Elle demeurera à l'écart des courants, suivant sa propre voie. Ses gros plans de fleurs, qui caractérisent une bonne partie de sa production, révèlent son sens aigu de l'observation. Le format de ses toiles, les couleurs et les nuances rendent ses tableaux pratiquement abstraits. Les paysages du Nouveau-Mexique lui offrent de nouveaux sujets. Ses toiles représentant des crânes d'animaux, peints minutieusement, cherchent à symboliser la beauté du désert. Ses nombreux voyages en avion durant les années 1950 et 1960 lui inspirent sa série sur les nuages avec des toiles souvent de grandes dimensions.
À sa mort, Georgia O'Keeffe laisse environ 900 tableaux.
En novembre 2014, la vente aux enchères du tableau « Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 » en salle des ventes à New York, estimé initialement à 15 millions de dollars, monte à 44,4 millions de dollars, établissant par la même occasion un nouveau record mondial lors d'une vente aux enchères pour une artiste féminine.Le Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, un musée consacré à l'artiste, a été inauguré en 1997, à Santa Fe, grâce aux avoirs légués à sa mort. Sa maison à Abiquiú a été déclarée National Historic Landmark en 1998. Un film inspiré de son mariage a été réalisé par Edwin Sherin en 1991, A Marriage: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Un film biographique de Bob Balaban, Georgia O'Keeffe, est paru en 2009. Ses œuvres font partie des collections de nombreuses institutions muséales.

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2024 - Gravir les montagnes en peinture
Un blog de Francis Rousseau   

MACHU PICCHU PAINTED BY GEORGIA O'KEEFFE

GEORGIA O' KEEFFE (1887–1986)

Machu Picchu (2,430 m -7,970 ft)

Peru

1. In Machu Picchu, morning light (Peruvian Landscape), n.d. watercolor on paper (9 x 11 7/8 i.), 

Heckscher Museum of Art

The mountain and site 

Machu Picchu  is a 15th-century Inca citadel situated on a mountain ridge 2,430 m -7,970 ft above sea level. It is located in the Cusco Region, Urubamba Province, Machupicchu District in Peru, above the Sacred Valley, which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Machu Picchu lies in the southern hemisphere, 13.164 degrees south of the equator. It is 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Cusco, on the crest of the mountain Machu Picchu, located about 2,430 m-7,970 feet above mean sea level, over 1,000 m-3,300 ft lower than Cusco, which has an elevation of (3,600 m -11,800 ft. As such, it had a milder climate than the Inca capital. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in South America, one of the most visited tourist attractions in Latin America  and the most visited in Peru.

The city sits in a saddle between the two mountains Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu, with a commanding view down two valleys and a nearly impassable mountain at its back.

Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas" (a title more accurately applied to Vilcabamba), it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization. The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was not known to the Spanish during the colonial period and remained unknown to the outside world until American historian Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911.

The Painter
Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most significant and intriguing artists of the twentieth century, known internationally for her boldly innovative art. Her distinct flowers, dramatic cityscapes, glowing landscapes, and images of bones against the stark desert sky are iconic and original contributions to American Modernism.
Born on November 15, 1887, the second of seven children, Georgia Totto O’Keeffe grew up on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905-1906 and the Art Students League in New York in 1907-1908. Under the direction of William Merritt Chase, F. Luis Mora, and Kenyon Cox she learned the techniques of traditional realist painting. The direction of her artistic practice shifted dramatically in 1912 when she studied the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow’s emphasis on composition and design offered O’Keeffe an alternative to realism. She experimented for two years, while she taught art in South Carolina and west Texas. Seeking to find a personal visual language through which she could express her feelings and ideas, she began a series of abstract charcoal drawings in 1915 that represented a radical break with tradition and made O’Keeffe one of the very first American artists to practice pure abstraction.
O’Keeffe mailed some of these highly abstract drawings to a friend in New York City, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. An art dealer and internationally known photographer, he was the first to exhibit her work in 1916. He would eventually become O’Keeffe’s husband.
In the summer of 1929, O’Keeffe made the first of many trips to northern New Mexico. The stark landscape, distinct indigenous art, and unique regional style of adobe architecture inspired a new direction in O’Keeffe’s artwork. For the next two decades she spent part of most years living and working in New Mexico . She made the state her permanent home in 1949, three years after Stieglitz’s death. O’Keeffe’s New Mexico paintings coincided with a growing interest in regional scenes by American Modernists seeking a distinctive view of America. Her simplified and refined representations of this region express a deep personal response to the high desert terrain.
In the 1950s, O’Keeffe began to travel internationally. She created paintings that evoked a sense of the spectacular places she visited, including the mountain peaks of Peru (see above) and Japan’s Mount Fuji. At the age of seventy-three she embarked on a new series focused on the clouds in the sky and the rivers below....

HUAYNA PICCHU PHOTOGRAPHED BY MARTIN CHAMBI

MARTIN CHAMBI (1893-1973), 

Machu Picchu, Huayna Picchu (2,430 m -7,970 ft) 

Peru

In Huayna Picchu con humo, photo, 1929

The mountain and site
Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel situated on a mountain ridge 2,430 m -7,970 ft above sea level. It is located in the Cusco Region, Urubamba Province, Machupicchu District in Peru, above the Sacred Valley, which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Machu Picchu lies in the southern hemisphere, 13.164 degrees south of the equator. It is 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Cusco, on the crest of the mountain Machu Picchu, located about 2,430 m-7,970 feet above mean sea level, over 1,000 m-3,300 ft lower than Cusco, which has an elevation of (3,600 m -11,800 ft. As such, it had a milder climate than the Inca capital. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in South America, one of the most visited tourist attractions in Latin America and the most visited in Peru.
The city sits in a saddle between the two mountains Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu, with a commanding view down two valleys and a nearly impassable mountain at its back.
Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas" (a title more accurately applied to Vilcabamba), it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization. The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was not known to the Spanish during the colonial period and remained unknown to the outside world until American historian Hiram Bingham III brought it to international attention in 1911.


The photographer
Martín Chambi Jiménez or Martín Chambi de Coaza, was a photographer, originally from southern Peru. He was one of the first major indigenous Latin American photographers. Recognized for the profound historic and ethnic documentary value of his photographs, he was a prolific portrait photographer in the towns and countryside of the Peruvian Andes. As well as being the leading portrait photographer in Cuzco, Chambi made many landscape photographs, which he sold mainly in the form of postcards, a format he pioneered in Peru.
In 1979, New York's MOMA held a Chambi retrospective, which later traveled to various locations and inspired other international expositions of his work.
Martín Chambi was born into a Quechua-speaking peasant family in one of the poorest regions of Peru, at the end of the nineteenth century. When his father went to work in a Carabaya Province gold mine on a small tributary of the River Inambari, Martin went along. There he had his first contact with photography, learning the rudiments from the photographer of the Santo Domingo Mine near Coaza (owned by the Inca Mining Company of Bradford, Pa). This chance encounter planted the spark that made him seek to support himself as a professional photographer. With that idea in mind, he headed in 1908 to the city of Arequipa, where photography was more developed and where there were established photographers who had taken the time to develop individual photographic styles and impeccable technique.
Chambi initially served as an apprentice in the studio of Max T. Vargas, but after nine years set up his own studio in Sicuani in 1917, publishing his first postcards in November of that year. In 1923 he moved to Cuzco and opened a studio there, photographing both society figures and his indigenous compatriots. During his career, Chambi also travelled the Andes extensively, photographing the landscapes, Inca ruins, and local people.
The archives of Martin Chambi's works are kept in Cuzco in his own house and by the care of his family. Everything is preserved in boxes, left by the photographer, classified and numbered by his own hand. A recent inventory has enumerated about 30,000 photographic plates and more than 12,000 to 15,000 photograph (rolls). Scanning work is in progress to retrieve photographic plates and photos.
"It is wrong to focus too much on the testimonial value of his photos. They have that, indeed, but, in equal measure they express the milieu in which he lived and they show (...) that when he got behind a camera, he became a giant, a true inventor, a veritable force of invention, a recreator of life."
(Mario Vargas Llosa)

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau