Teotihuacan, Mexico
AA-2026-71B671
On the image
He has positioned himself just off to the side of the frame, which was the polite convention of amateur travel photography before selfie sticks made vanity official: stand near the wonder, let someone else press the shutter, and let the wonder do the talking. Behind him the Pyramid of the Sun rises in its familiar stepped tiers, with a scatter of tiny figures visible near the summit, proof that climbing to the top of a 2,000-year-old ceremonial platform was, by the 1960s, simply what one did on vacation rather than an act requiring priestly sanction.
His camera hangs ready at his chest, a mid-century tourist's assurance that the moment could be owned twice over, once by the eye and once by the lens. He wears the era's uniform of casual competence, turtleneck and slacks, the look of a man who has read the guidebook chapter on Teotihuacan and now intends to have opinions about it at dinner parties for years to come.
In the middle distance the smaller Pyramid of the Moon closes the sightline, and low stone platforms edge the foreground where archaeologists had by then done the patient work of clearing centuries of overburden. None of it required his understanding to keep standing, which is rather the point of a monument built by people who assumed the same thing about him.
The historian's note
Teotihuacan, located roughly thirty miles northeast of Mexico City, was one of the largest urban centers in the pre-Columbian Americas, reaching its peak population between roughly 100 and 650 CE, well before the rise of the Aztec empire that later gave the site its Nahuatl name, meaning "the place where the gods were created." The Pyramid of the Sun, seen here, is the third-largest pyramid structure in the world by base area and was constructed in stages beginning in the early first century CE.
By the 1960s the site was a fully developed archaeological park and a standard stop on the growing international tourist circuit to Mexico, following major excavation and restoration campaigns conducted by the Mexican government earlier in the twentieth century. Visitors were permitted to climb both major pyramids, a practice later restricted in parts of the site as conservation concerns grew.
The smaller Pyramid of the Moon anchors the northern end of the Avenue of the Dead, the ceremonial axis around which the ancient city was planned, and its visibility here situates the vantage point along that same processional corridor.
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Tourist at the Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan, Mexico, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-71B671. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/tourist-at-the-pyramid-of-the-sun-teotihuacan-mexico-1960s.
@misc{aaAA202671B671,
title = {Tourist at the Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan, Mexico, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-71B671},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/tourist-at-the-pyramid-of-the-sun-teotihuacan-mexico-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - Tourist at the Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan, Mexico, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-71B671 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/tourist-at-the-pyramid-of-the-sun-teotihuacan-mexico-1960s ER -
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