Published in 1986 by Archive Pictures/University of New Mexico Press. Hardcover with jacket, 9 x 12 inches, over 70 black and white photographs, 96 pages. $100 plus shipping

From the photographer: 

"I first went to the Yucatan 1976. I'd been working in Miami and wanted to relax . . .The Yucatan is a gentle place: less frantic and hidden than the big cities of the world. My days in Merida lounged from plaza to Cafi Express to market to plaza to Cafi Express - all in four short blocks. Sometimes I drove to a ruin or the beach. The food, happily, was not only Mexican, but Lebanese - from Levantine traders in the Caribbean.

I think I was seduced by Mayan notions of progress: that time is cyclical; things don't get better and better day-by-day, they just swirl around like dust in the street. Mostly, the pictures remind me of the small, northern New Jersey towns where I grew up, where days were filled with finding a girl or a job or a pleasant way to fill the time until tomorrow. Maybe, because I'm short and stocky, I felt at home: most Mayans past first blush tend to be chunky, so Merida is a city of chubby cops and chubby robbers, chubby Romeos and chubby Juliettas. I was the tallest man around. Maybe, just maybe, I was once a Mayan."

CHARLES HARBUTT (1935–2015) was an American photographer and educator. His pictures have been exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC; the Art Institute of Chicago; and, in Paris, at the Beaubourg, the Bibliothèque Nationale, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. He is represented in the permanent collections of those institutions, as well as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; George Eastman House, Rochester; and countless other private collections.

Harbutt is the author of four books including Departures and Arrivals (Damiani, 2012), Progreso (Navarin, 1986/Actuality Inc., 1987), and Travelog (MIT Press, 1973), and was a tenured professor in photography at Parsons / The New School 1999–2015.

In 1997 Harbutt’s negatives, master prints and archive were acquired for the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson. Peter Fetterman Gallery, Santa Monica, handles print sales for the Charles Harbutt estate.