"I camp alone in the woods and it is so terribly hot today…even the dogs don’t visit…hearing a cry of a Toucan way up in the tree. The creek so low…a trickle…and I worry…for the Maya need rain for their corn. This morning the child Chan K’in came before dawn and lit his way with achote (a stick of resin set to fire used as a torch in the dark) Such a beautiful way we start the day… It is black under the canopy…we relax together in the hammock…I keep nodding out…so close still to my sleep. It’s five in the morning and I make coffee over the open fire…then we leave for the hike to the lagoon . I photograph what people are unable to see…expose people to what they would not look at". [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/74781493/one-mahogany-left-standing-the-maya-lacandon] One Mahogany Left Standing collects photographs made by Yarrow during several trips to southern Mexico in the mid-1990s. During early tourist visits Yarrow became interested in the Lacandón, a loosely descended tribe of Mayan natives living traditionally the forested Chiapas region. She camped near the Lacandón settlement of Naha, gradually befriended some of them, extended her stays, and over the course of several years became more involved in their lives. The thirty-one pictures in the book were made on many trips from roughly 1993-2002. These photos are interspersed with excerpts of Yarrow's journal entries from the same period. Selections from this series were shown at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland last year, and this book was published in conjunction with the show. Yarrow's visits to the Lacandón coincided with a time of rapid change in their culture, as the homogenizing impact of outside intrusions accelerated. The changes were perhaps most noticeable on a physical level — the title refers directly to local deforestation as mahogany is the traditional wood for their canoes — but also in all sorts of more subtle ways. Beginning in the mid-20th Century when the Lacandón had little contact with the outer world, the pace of cultural intermingling with Mexican nationals and visiting tourists has continued unabated to the present day. They are still a distinct tribe of roughly 500 members, but one wonders for how long. "The adolescents are susceptible to the temptations of the future," warned Yarrow in the book's Kickstarter video, and that perceived threat was clearly an impetus for the book. Yarrow wanted to root this project firmly in the past, while creating an historical document that would survive into the future. Yarrow's found her tribe and it's under threat. Can you blame her for the urge to preserve some token memory, if not in amber then within the pages of a book? Fortunately the book focuses less on the pressures faced by the Lacandón than on serene everyday moments and candid portraits. It's mostly folks standing around the village, smiling warmly, caught in various daily tasks. From an ethnographic perspective you can probably see the potential problem here. The myth of the Noble Savage runs deep in Western Culture. It goes hand in hand with the modern white explorer coming to study and/or save the situation. Earlier photographers like Edward Curtis fell under its spell, and One Mahogany Left Standing might fit into a similar category. There is certainly an aspect of romantic primitivism here, and I don't want to excuse it entirely. But in this case it's mostly overshadowed by Yarrow's obvious fondness for her subject. She's immersed deeply in the culture, created lifetime friendships, and the resulting photographs have the tender, intimate, and candid quality of family snapshots. The book's sensibility owes as much to outright love as it does to exotic wonder. [http://blog.photoeye.com/2015/03/book-review-one-mahogany-left-standing.html]