A reader named “Yes” correctly identified the photographer of this week’s photos as Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904).
Muybridge was born in England and emigrated to the U.S. in 1851. While he would become best known for his motions studies such as yesterday’s jumping horse, I think he first won fame for his monumental photographs of Yosemite Valley. But in San Francisco he became involved in a scandal surrounding the murder of his wife’s lover, and under the circumstances he thought it prudent to transpose himself for a time to Guatemala.
In Guatemala, his documentary photographs of work on coffee plantations — such as Wednesday’s photo, which shows coffee workers on a plantation in San Isidro — were important recordings of an economy in the throes of radical, and painful, transformation.
But Muybridge also did some more conventional travel photography during his time in Guatemala (1875). Tuesday’s photo shows a view of Lake Atitlan, while we began on Monday with a photograph of Volcan Quetzaltenango.
.