One week to go!! When I travelled to India in 2006, one of the most visually interesting aspects of my journey was locating the precise spots where my grandfather F W Champion had taken photographs, and then taking the same scene 70 years or so later. Sadly, during my forthcoming expedition to Guatemala and Panama, I shall not be able to do exactly the same because my great grandfather, laden down as he was with insect-collecting equipment, did not document his journeys photographically. However, there is a slightly tenuous link with the world-renowned pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who travelled extensively in both countries in 1875 (having recently murdered his wife’s lover – it is a fascinating story!). As there were few hotels available, North American and European travellers tended to stay with hospitable coffee planters and other settlers. Muybridge stayed with many of the very same people whom my grandfather lodged with only four years later, and he documented his time in both Guatemala and Panama with a wonderful series of photographs, which allow me to see exactly how these places looked at almost the same time that my great grandfather was there.
Finca San Isidro, Muybridge, 1875
As well as documenting more general scenes, Muybridge was specifically engaged to provide a photographic record of the coffee-manufacturing process, and two of the coffee plantations in which he stayed, the Finca Las Nubes and the Finca San Isidro, both belonging to American coffee planter William Nelson, were visited five years later by my great grandfather G C Champion, who was also a guest of William Nelson. And perhaps most interesting of all is the fact that it was at the Finca Las Nubes that my great grandfather was staying when he found the butterfly Drucina championi. Muybridge’s photographs will therefore allow me to gain a remarkable insight into the Guatemala my great grandfather travelled so extensively in, and I shall be trying to find some of the views he took in 1875, and taking comparative shots of these as well.
