Photos selected for this book "Scholars in Dark Glasses. Photos of MMARP Symposia 1982 to 1994," are from the Lawrence Gustave Desmond Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project photographic collection archived by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (GRI Special Collections).
The Introduction discusses the founding of the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project (MMARP) by Professor David Carrasco at the University of Colorado-Boulder around 1980, symposia photos, and the development of the Templo Mayor archaeological site documentary photographic archive from photo donations and documentary photos taken by Desmond of the Templo Mayor archaeological site in Mexico City in the 1980s
The photos of symposia are documentary in style, and are of the archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, historians of religions, art historians, historians, archaeo-astronomers, and many other scholars from Mexico, the US, Japan, UK, and Europe who contributed to the development of a new direction in the study of the life and religious practices of the Aztecs, Maya, and other ancient peoples who civilized Mesoamerica before the European invasion.