Photo Exhibit at CSUN Shows Mayan Culture in Transition

When photographer Macduff Everton first began taking pictures of the Mayans of the Yucatan more than 20 years ago, he envisioned publishing a picture book on a traditional culture far removed from eight-lane freeways, factories and Western culture. But the longer hestayed, the more transistor radios, watches and polyester shirts cropped up in his photographs side by side with traditional dress. He was witnessing a culture in transition.

An exhibition of 82 black-and-white prints drawn from the nearly 200 pictures Everton has published in his photo journal on Mayan life is on display at the Cal State Northridge Main Gallery through March 28.

Everton said he at first resisted photographing the changes creeping into the daily lives of the Mayans.

“I tried numerous approaches to keep these offending items out of the photographs until I realized that these were the very elements I needed to show,” Everton wrote in his book.

As the onslaught of changes continued, “I decided not to try to conceal a new shiny watch on the wrist of a villager, or to avoid photographing the person wearing polyester clothes next to another dressed traditionally, or new electrical lines coming to a village.”

Everton’s book, “The Modern Maya: A Culture in Transition,” is also a narrative of his experiences living with the Mayans as long as 13 months at a time from 1969 to 1990 when the last picture was taken for the book.

Like many others, Everton first went to the Yucatan in 1967 to photograph the ancient Mayan ruins. He had a two-month assignment for a small California company that specialized in making archeological films.

Fascinated by the descendants of a culture thousands of years old, he stayed to photograph the daily lives of families he came to know so well that he became the godfather to one of their children.

“The idea I had starting out was to do a ‘day in the life’ of the Mayans,” Everton said in a recent interview. “It turned out more like 20 years in the life.

“The Mayans were so foreign and exotic to my countrymen that I had to make them personal, rather than elements of a photograph. I thought that by presenting them from different walks of life, I could do that.” His pictures are of people at work--planting corn, making corn tortillas, drawing water from communal wells, collecting the chicle base for chewing gum from a tree and drying strands of henequen from the agave plant to be made into twine, rope and textiles.

There are also photographs of husbands and wives massaging away the strains of a hard day’s work; a family eating black bean soup and hot corn tortillas garnished with slices of lime and chili; photographs of weddings, rain ceremonies, a 15-year-old’s birthday celebration, couples lounging together in hammocks and children enjoying the traveling circuses.

Everton’s display at CSUN is the final stop for the traveling exhibition mounted by the UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, said Sharon Major, a UCSB spokeswoman.

Everton was a student at UCSB and used it as home base between his travels to the Yucatan, Major said. “He’s been a visiting lecturer and instructor over the last 15 years and is very popular in the Santa Barbara community.”

The exhibit has also been shown at Lehigh University Art Galleries in Bethlehem, Pa., and Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago.

“The Modern Maya: A Culture in Transition,” an exhibition of photographs by Macduff Everton continues through March 28 at the Cal State Northridge Main Gallery, Fine Arts Building, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. Free, with free parking on Saturdays. Open noon to 4 p.m. Monday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Call (818) 885-2226.