THROCKMORTON FINE ART is pleased to present the exhibit “ Sacred Architecture in the Americas.” The exhibit will include images of notable ruins from the pre-Columbian era by an accomplished group of photographers: Désiré Charnay, Teobert Maler, Henry William Jackson, Hugo Brehme, Martín Chambi, Laura Gilpin, and Marilyn Bridges.

The pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas erected buildings and monuments that were guided in their conception, design, and even their location by deeply held and all-encompassing religious beliefs. All architecture was sacred. Architecture was—and remains—a prism of the civilizations’ cosmology.

The photographs included in the exhibit are from a wide span of time, from the late nineteenth century to the beginnings of the twenty-first century. Thus, the photographers approached the sacred architecture of the Americas differently. Some early images, such as those by Désiré Charnay and William Henry Jackson, were the outgrowth of expeditions seeking to “discover” the unknown. Photographs were documentary-like, seeking to inform and dazzle the public. Other photographs, such as those by Hugo Brehme, are couched in a pictorialism that invites a pleasant emotional response. The images of Martín Chambi are emblematic of intellectuals’ efforts in the 1920s and 1930s to reassert the values and accomplishment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Marilyn Bridges uses the technology of the day to take aerial photographs, giving us views of ruins that we otherwise would never see. Each photograph in the exhibit is informed and enriched by the circumstances of its creation, and the skills of the artist behind the image.

Individually and collectively, the works in “Sacred Architecture in the Americas” are evocative: they induce a reflection about the history of the Americas, and they humble us by reminding us of our fleeting moment in this history.