The work of anthropologists and archaeologists has long appealed to the popular imagination. Traveling to foreign lands; unearthing, out of sand or jungle, cities built by ancient civilizations; finding objects of legend or fantasy—these are the images invoked by archaeology and anthropology. The public wishes to hear stories of adventure, treasure, and romance, and to witness the fantastic artifacts and exotic images that accompany these narratives. Over the years, the Penn Museum has had its own share of historic great discoveries. Adventures in Photography presents us with the diverse human family, and invites us to reflect on our own lives through the lens of the unfamiliar.

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In June 1931, the Penn Museum launched its first archaeological expedition to Iran. Erich F. Schmidt, a young German WWI veteran and archaeologist, led this project and documented it with nearly 2,600 unusual photographs, a cultural trove of immediate resonance. Exploring Iran is comprised of 50 of these photographs.

Schmidt and his team engaged in some of the earliest aerial reconnaissance of the spectacular natural land forms in order to pinpoint their archaeological efforts, creating innovative survey methodology as they went. His revealing and intimate photographs—often taken under far from ideal conditions, likes sandstorms—chronicle a time on the threshold of social and economic change, from bazaars to coffee- and teahouses, to farming and the splendor of magnificent mosques and settlements in a brutally beautiful uncompromising landscape, filled with history.

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More than two centuries since enslaved laborers of West African descent evicted french colonials from Haiti’s troubled republic, the second-oldest in the Western hemisphere, the lot of rural Haitians has changed little. Life is tied to the exhausted land, worked with hoe to the cycle of seasons. One’s world is that which can be taken in from the top of the highest mountain.

Andrea Baldeck came to know this world as a volunteer physician on several trips to the valley’s Hopital Albert Schweitzer during the 1980s, returning as a photographer in the mid-90s with the opportunity to see the valley and interact with its people in a new and more extensive way. In permitting their images to be taken they were giving much, and in their faces they revealed much — hope, resignation, forbearance, pride, strength, and love.

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Forty-five black and white images by photographer Andrea Baldeck explore the territory, often called "between heaven and earth," encompassing ethnic, cultural and historical Tibet, which stretches from the western Himalaya mountains of Ladakh (northern India), to Bhutan, the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and east into Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. Her photographs offer a compelling look at an ancient, mostly Buddhist world through portraiture, landscapes, architecture and still life. These invite the viewer to share in her personal, often intimate, journey, exploring the texture and rhythm of human life in these harsh and remote mountains, once isolated, now increasingly exposed to the forces of societal change in an ever more interconnected world.

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This exhibit features works of textile art of the Huichol Indians of Mexico. After ingesting the sacred peyote cactus, artists receive their visions and translate them into vibrant yarn paintings, now highly prized by collectors of folk art around the world. The popularity of this unique art form transcends cultural boundaries, and this exhibit helps us understand the world of its creators and their inspiration. By focusing on Penn Museum’s remarkable collection of 31 yarn paintings by José Benítez Sánchez, a leading Huichol artist in this medium, the exhibition sheds light on the rich heritage of the Huichol peoples. Brief informative texts, maps, and color photographs enhance the vibrant yarn paintings and provide museum audiences a rare glimpse into the complexities of the Huichol spiritual world.

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The great Maya creation story, the Popol Vuh, sanctified the mountains, caves, and rivers of the Alta Verapaz of today’s Guatemala, where events played out in mythic time. Except for the excavations done by the Penn Museum in the early 20th century, the region is almost unknown archaeologically. 

Penn Museum’s Chamá vessels, the only collection with a secure history, show how objects reflect cultural shifts and how people cope with change. Painted Metaphors portrays a time of political change in a troubled outpost of the Maya world, and a human story of power and intrigue among people who lived more than 1,300 years ago. Nineteen Chamá polychrome ceramics are accompanied by more than 100 objects illustrating Maya daily life, religious ritual, and shifts in rulership. This is a traveling exhibit of unsurpassed beauty and archaeological significance. 

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This exhibit presents more than 120 exquisitely crafted pieces of Precolumbian goldwork from Penn Museum’s 1940 excavations at the ancient cemetery site of Sitio Conte in what is now central Panama. The exhibition includes large embossed plaques, cast pendants and nose ornaments, gold-sheathed ear rods, and necklaces of intricate beads—as well as polychrome ceramics, and objects made of precious and semi-precious stones, whale-tooth ivory, and bone.

In the first section of the exhibit, visitors are introduced to the geographical setting of central Panama and the excavations at Sitio Conte.

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The outcomes of the evolutionary process have a profound impact on every aspect of our daily lives. Surviving: The Body of Evidence examines that process and its results through an interactive experience in which the visitor is the subject. Timely and enlightening, Surviving provides situations that enable visitors to move from knowledge of their individual characteristics to the universality of human features that are based in our evolution.

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Contemporary life in Southeast Asia is the subject of this stunning exhibit of 52 black and white photographs by Andrea Baldeck. During 2001 and 2002, Baldeck explored regions of Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia and Laos. After the war in Vietnam accessibility to these countries declined drastically, and this exhibit provides an opportunity to reconnect with this region of the world.

In Baldeck’s words, “To travel in Southeast Asia is to be humbled by its layers of history and humanity, and by the realization that in a lifetime one could barely scratch the surface of understanding. But what a rich and tantalizing surface!” Using light and shadow, contrast and composition, Baldeck has sought to fix fragments of the surface for the viewer, hoping to reveal a bit of what lies beneath. Baldeck used a 35mm camera and available natural light.

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