This album of photographs entitled Mission scientifique française en Amérique du sud: travaux et fouilles de Tiahuanaco 1903, is the result of a French government sponsored expedition to Bolivia. Following the expedition, which also included visits to Argentina, Chile, and Peru, several volumes were published on the anthropology, paleontology, linguistics, geology, archaeology, and cartography of those regions. This album of photographs appears to be the most complete record of the Mission's field work in Tiahuanaco (Tiwanaku) and is of scholarly value since the results of the excavation were not published on this major pre-Columbian site in Bolivia. The only other known copy of this album is in the Musée du Quai Branly (formerly Musée de l'Homme) in Paris. The photographs were taken by the Hermanos Sintich, two brothers who were based in La Paz, who had specialized in producing cabinet cards of portraits of Bolivians.
For more information about the album, see Colonialism and Tiwanaku: Perceptions and Implications by Georgia de Havenon and The Tiwanaku by Alan Kolata, as well as other related texts available in the Museum Library.
Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum