54 loose original gelatin silver photos, including 43 smaller images, mostly ca. 8,5x11,5 cm (3 ¼ x 4 ½ in) and 11 large photos, from ca. 21x27 cm (8 ¼ x 10 ½ in) to ca. 13x20 cm (5x8 in). All but three small photos with Boynton’s name written in ink or ink stamps “Photo by Judd Emery Boynton” on verso; over thirty small photos with blank ink captions on verso; three images with period ink stamps “Oct. 1933” on verso. With a loose printed leaflet ca. 27,5x21,5 cm (11 x 8 ½ in). One large photo with mild stains on the margins, one with mild creases on extremities, a number of small photos slightly waved, but overall a very good collection of interesting photos.

Historically significant collection of original gelatin silver photos of South America – mostly, Bolivia and Peru, taken and collected by a Berkeley architect, photographer and adventurer, Judd Emery Boynton, during his travels to the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes and the Amazonian jungle in the 1930s. A son of a noted Berkeley attorney Charles C. Boynton and his wife Florence (a friend and student of famous American choreographer and pioneer of modern contemporary dance, Isadora Duncan), Judd “was born at the temple-like family home known as “The Temple of the Wings,” but nicknamed “The Doughnut House” by local residents [2800 Buena Vista Way, a Berkely Landmark since 1992]. The family, which included seven children, dressed in togas and lived a life of simplicity, eating nuts, berries and fruit. After graduating from the University of California, Boynton explored the Andes and the Amazon River and later prospected for gold in the Mother Lode country. He wrote on architecture, astronomy and also authored a book of memoirs” (Obituaries. Judd Emery Boynton// The Berkeley Gazette. 19 August 1983, p. 5). In the 1920s, Judd Boynton went on several mountaineering trips in the Yosemite National Park, having climbed “most all of the peaks of note” (Anderson, R. In Yosemite// Merced (California) Sun-Star, 11 August 1933, p. 8), including Mt. Starr King and Half Dome without the used of cables, “iron eye bolts or similar contrivances” (Anderson, R. In Yosemite// Merced (California) Sun-Star, 24 July 1934, p. 2).

In the 1930s, Boynton took two trips to South America, visiting Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, travelling to the headwaters of the Amazon, “mule packing through the Andes” (Explorer to Speak at Club// The Oakland Post-Enquirer. 4 November 1936, p. 10), going across Lake Titicaca, visiting La Paz, and mountaineering in the Bolivian Andes (Anderson, R. In Yosemite// Merced (California) Sun-Star, 11 August 1933, p. 8), &c.

The collection includes over forty original gelatin silver snapshot photos of Bolivia and Peru, taken by Boynton during the same trip. Twenty-six images of Bolivia show the scene of erecting “an archeological find from Tiahuanoco” (Tiwanaku Pre-Columbian archaeological site) in La Paz, a “spire <…> discovered by Judd Boynton in the lost Canyon of Bolivia” (Palca Canyon), Andean Pueblos (towns) (“Palka,” “Sorata,” &c.), a group of “Bolivian recruits for the war in the Chaco” (the Chaco War, 1932-1935), a series of views of Bolivian Andes (Mt. Huayna Potosi, peaks, glaciers, roads, “an Ayamara shrine in the Andes of Bolivia,” “this is why Judd Boynton did not get to the top of Mt. Huayna Potosi in Bolivia… 17,500 and still looking up… hanging glaciers, &c.”), the Andean Plateau south of Lake Titicaca, Tiwanaku site (“Puerte del Sol - doorway of the Sun,” Stairs of Kalasasaya), equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar in La Paz, Mount Illimani, local farmers and their fields, “abandoned suspension bridge in the jungle past of the Bolivian Andes,” “road construction in the Bolivian jungle,” &c.

Sixteen photos of Peru show Cuzco (Plaza de Armas with the Cathedral Basilica, rooftop and street views), ruins of the Inca Sacsayhuaman citadel, Rio Pampas, the “lost valley of Abancay in the Andes of Peru” (the valley and city of Abancay taken from above, a street view), “market place in Ayacucho,” a plain near Ayacucho (where the decisive battle of the Peruvian War of Independence took place in 1824), a pack of llamas at the railway station in Mejorada, train passengers and local sellers at the “highest railway summit in the world, 15,600, on the Central of Peru Railway,” a portrait of “the gobnador (and his two aids) of a little Pueblo west of the Rio Apurimac in Peru,” &c.

The large images include three enlarged copies of the smaller views of Cuzco, Mt. Huayna Potosi and Bolivian Andes (present in the collection), as well as original photos of Panama Canal locks and watercourse, the Crypt of Heroes monument on the General Cemetery of Lima, Basilica and Convent of San Francisco in Quito, jungle forest and a scene with a donkey pulling an oil barrel in Ancon, Equador (the latter was reproduced in the “Oregon Daily Journal” to illustrate a material about Boynton’s travels: Across the Andes on Forty Dollars// The Oregon Daily Journal, 28 November 1937, p. 56; see more).

The collection also includes a portrait of Judd Boyton, posing next to the equestrian monument to Simon Bolivar, and a printed leaflet titled “Jungle Trek” and advertising Boynton’s documentary about his travels “through the ‘Green Hell’ of a trackless jungle, and across the remote fastness of the mighty Andes to the Headwaters of the Amazon” (illustrated with a reproduction of his portrait in front of Simon Bolivar’s monument).

Overall an interesting collection of original snapshot photographs of Bolivia, Peru and several other locations in South America, taken by a noted Californian mountaineer and adventurer in the 1930s.