Focus on South America: Geography, Cartography, and International Relations in Mary Upjohn Meader’s 1937 Aerial Photography of Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
8-3-2025 4:20 AM
Description
Kiki Barnes, Ph.D. Candidate, City University of New York - Graduate Center, New York City, U.S.A.
‘Focus on South America’: Geography, Cartography, and International Relations in Mary Upjohn Meader’s 1937 Aerial Photography of Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay
On September 16, 1937, newlyweds Mary Upjohn Meader (1916-2008) and Richard Upjohn Light (1902-1994) took off from Kalamazoo, Michigan, in a Bellanca monoplane and began a five-month, 35,000-mile expedition across South America and Africa. Supported by the American Geographical Society, the goal of the expedition was to document the geography and development of these continents through aerial photography. Meader was the photographer, radio operator, and navigator, and Light was the pilot. The trip itself and the more than 2,000 images resulting from it were unprecedented, and they remain significant contributions to the histories of aviation and aerial photography. However, there has been little scholarship devoted to the 1937-38 Meader-Light expedition, and published studies focus almost exclusively on their time in Africa. The historical significance of Meader’s South American work has been overlooked. Meader took what may be the earliest photographs of the Nazca lines in Peru (500 B.C.E.-500 C.E.), and the images reveal much about the lines and their relationship to the development of the Carretera Panamericana (Pan-American Highway), known in Peru as “Highway Number 1,” since the 1930s. The difficult logistics of the Meader-Light expedition and their interactions with various governments also attest to the fraught relationship between the United States and many South American nations during the interwar period. This paper will account for the unbalanced narrative of Meader’s photography, assess the extant images, and position them among the broader history of geographical expeditions between the United States and South America.
Kiki M. Barnes is a PhD candidate at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She has been a Curatorial Intern at the American Federation of Arts and a Mellon Curatorial Fellow in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her dissertation, advised by Dr. Katherine E. Manthorne, will examine landscapes of the Americas during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Barnes, Kiki, "Focus on South America: Geography, Cartography, and International Relations in Mary Upjohn Meader’s 1937 Aerial Photography of Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay" (2025). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day 2025. 14.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/schedule/14
Focus on South America: Geography, Cartography, and International Relations in Mary Upjohn Meader’s 1937 Aerial Photography of Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay
Kiki Barnes, Ph.D. Candidate, City University of New York - Graduate Center, New York City, U.S.A.
‘Focus on South America’: Geography, Cartography, and International Relations in Mary Upjohn Meader’s 1937 Aerial Photography of Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay
On September 16, 1937, newlyweds Mary Upjohn Meader (1916-2008) and Richard Upjohn Light (1902-1994) took off from Kalamazoo, Michigan, in a Bellanca monoplane and began a five-month, 35,000-mile expedition across South America and Africa. Supported by the American Geographical Society, the goal of the expedition was to document the geography and development of these continents through aerial photography. Meader was the photographer, radio operator, and navigator, and Light was the pilot. The trip itself and the more than 2,000 images resulting from it were unprecedented, and they remain significant contributions to the histories of aviation and aerial photography. However, there has been little scholarship devoted to the 1937-38 Meader-Light expedition, and published studies focus almost exclusively on their time in Africa. The historical significance of Meader’s South American work has been overlooked. Meader took what may be the earliest photographs of the Nazca lines in Peru (500 B.C.E.-500 C.E.), and the images reveal much about the lines and their relationship to the development of the Carretera Panamericana (Pan-American Highway), known in Peru as “Highway Number 1,” since the 1930s. The difficult logistics of the Meader-Light expedition and their interactions with various governments also attest to the fraught relationship between the United States and many South American nations during the interwar period. This paper will account for the unbalanced narrative of Meader’s photography, assess the extant images, and position them among the broader history of geographical expeditions between the United States and South America.
Kiki M. Barnes is a PhD candidate at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She has been a Curatorial Intern at the American Federation of Arts and a Mellon Curatorial Fellow in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her dissertation, advised by Dr. Katherine E. Manthorne, will examine landscapes of the Americas during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Comments
All times listed are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Use timeanddate.com to convert to your local time zone.