Macduff Everton

Macduff Everton (born August 13, 1947) is an American photographer, known for his work with the Maya primarily on the Yucatán Peninsula.

Early life and education Macduff Everton was born on August 13, 1947, in Pearl River, New York, to missionaries. Everton moved with his family to Oregon when he was one year old. He attended Santa Barbara High School before leaving to explore the world.

Everton returned to the United States at 19 years old and landed a job with an educational film company to create college-level archaeological and anthropological filmstrips in Latin America. This led to Everton's introduction to the Maya people in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.

Everton would spend six months at a time in the backcountry, then return to the Yucatán, and finally the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he earned a B.A. in 1981 from the College of Creative Studies and an M.F.A. in 1984 when he was in his mid-30s.

Career Everton's first trip to the Yucatán was in 1967. His 1991 book, The Modern Maya: A Culture in Transition, shed light on the Maya people during globalization and critical change. In 2012, the University of Texas Press published The Modern Maya: Incidents of Travel and Friendship in Yucatán.

Everton is also considered a master of panoramic photography. His magnum opus is his work with the living Maya on the Yucatán Peninsula. His appreciation of light and weather, coupled with his observational skills, have been attributed to his time living in rural areas.

Everton's works are in the public collections of Bibliothèque nationale de France, British Museum, International Center of Photography, Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Musée de l'Élysée, and Museo de Arte Moderno.

Writings He has contributed to several archaeological books by other authors, including The Code of Kings: The Language of Seven Sacred Mayan Temples and Tombs, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path, and The Cities of Ancient Mexico: Reconstructing a Lost World.

Editorial work Hired originally by editors for his fine art eye, Everton earned a reputation as a photographer who knew how to travel. He has previously worked with several print and online publications, including Condé Nast Traveler, Life, Los Angeles, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, and Smithsonian. He is a contributing editor and photographer at National Geographic Traveler, where he has photographed stories from Beijing to Big Sur.

Critical reception Peter Galassi, director of photography at Museum of Modern Art, noted the playful creativity of Everton's early artistic exploration: “Macduff Everton's series of fotoverigraphs is an unusually imaginative and witty piece of work. No academic could offer a more persuasive demonstration of the elasticity of photographic meaning -- or one so full of pleasure and surprise.” An early champion of his landscape portraiture, The New York Times photography critic and curator Andy Grundberg wrote, “Macduff Everton updates travel photography in the same way that Ansel Adams updated 19th-century photography of the West. He captures strange and eloquent moments in which time, and the world, seem to stand still.”

Personal life Everton lives in Santa Barbara, California. Past artistic collaborations include The Western Horizon and Patagonia, La Última Esperanza. They were featured in director Russ Spencer's Full Circle, a documentary about their collaboration on The Western Horizon.

He was married in 1968 to Ruth Everton, but the couple divorced in February 1973. Everton has a son from the previous marriage, Robert Everton. Patagonia: La Ultima Esperanza (University of Texas Press, 2012) The Book of Santa Barbara (Tixcacalcupul Press, 2010) The Western Horizon (Harry N. Abrams, 2000) The Modern Maya: A Culture in Transition (University of New Mexico Press, 1991) That’s Not Entirely True: An Album of Fotoverigraphs (Tixcacalcupul Press, 1986) El Circo Mágico Modelo (Carolrhoda Books, 1979) Birdmen of Papantla (Ward Ritchie Press, 1972)