B. Traven is one of the great writers of the twentieth century. He spent the first half of his life in Germany and the second in Mexico, leaving a literary production of remarkable global reach: more than forty million copies sold, over fifteen hundred editions, and translations into more than forty languages.

What is far less widely known is that Traven was an accomplished photographer.

A decisive moment in his photographic activity came in 1926, with his participation in an expedition to Chiapas organized by Enrique Palacios under the auspices of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. From this mission would emerge the book Explorations in the State of Chiapas, May–August 1926, published in 1929. 

The expedition, initially concerned with the study of locust infestations, brought together agronomists, epidemiologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists. Traven’s role as photographer placed him at the intersection of scientific documentation and lived experience.

Yet his work quickly exceeded the strictly documentary function assigned to him. He recorded not only the activities of the expedition, but also the landscapes, architecture, and indigenous communities of the region, as well as the rhythms of daily life. Chiapas became a formative experience. Traven remained there for several months after the expedition concluded in August 1926 and returned on multiple occasions the following year.

Today, approximately 3,000 photographs are preserved within the Traven archive, forming one of the largest known visual corpora associated with a major twentieth-century writer. This body of work demonstrates a photographer with a disciplined eye, a documentary instinct, and a deep engagement with the social and material realities that also underpin his literary production.

The selection presented by Obsidiana forms part of a broader, ongoing project to catalogue and study this archive in its entirety, as the basis for future publications and exhibitions. Rather than offering a closed interpretation, this work seeks to open the archive, to activate it, and to make it legible from the present through continued research and dialogue.

Far from being incidental, Traven’s photography constitutes an integral part of his creative project. It prolongs and expands his literary work, offering a parallel mode of inquiry into the same world he sought to describe in words. Read alongside his writings, these images reveal photography not as an auxiliary practice, but as another way of thinking—one that allows us to enter more deeply into the material, social, and imaginative landscape that defines Traven’s work.