| | | | Jerusalem
Resources Francis Frith Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Described (London: J.S. Virtue, 1858-60)
Francis Frith Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views (London: W. Mackenzie, 1860)
Shimon Gibson Jerusalem in Original Photographs 1850-1920 (Stacey International for the Palestine Exploration Fund, 2003) ISBN 1-900988-321
Since its foundation in 1865 the Palestine Exploration Fund has amassed some of the most outstanding and unique photographic archives of the Holy Land. These include images of Palestine, Israel, Syria, Trans-Jordan, and Lebanon dating from the 1850s to the present day. Its core collection reflects, on the one hand, the fascination of the Levant for Europeans of the Victorian and Edwardian age who were captivated by its exotic qualities. Some of the images are the work of commercial photographers such as Bonfils, Robertson, Beato, Frith and Graham. Others were recorded by amateurs with a passionate interest in the Holy Land, whose photographic albums have been donated to the collection. At the same time, the collection faithfully records the wide-ranging interests of the Palestine Exploration Fund itself, and many of the photographs were taken by those engaged on its own projects - among them Kitchener, Bliss, Macalister and Garstang. Central to these activities in the nineteenth century was the exploration of Jerusalem. A landmark in the photographic recording of Jerusalem was the Ordnance Survey of the city in 1865-1866.
Shimon Gibson, Senior Fellow of the Albright Institute, Jerusalem, has been researching the picture archive for many years, has selected the photographs reproduced here, and has written the accompanying text. He is an accomplished archaeologist, who resides in Jerusalem and is intimately acquainted with the city and its remarkable past. In this volume he presents a selection of images from what must surely be one of the most photographed cities in the world. Many of the pictures represent buildings and scenes no longer in existence, or which have been radically changed. Yet this is far more than a visually captivating step into the past, for the author allows us to experience the sights and sense the atmosphere and smells of nineteenth and early twentieth century Jerusalem, a city which, at this time was still essentially medieval, with its gates closed at night for much of the period. Comforts which the modern tourist takes for granted - such as good roads, motorised transport, and availability of drinkable water and acceptable sanitation - were all lacking. Shimon Gibson gives us here the very essence of old Jerusalem - timeless and deeply rewarding.
Engin Voir Gizgen, Photography in the Ottoman Empire 1839-1919 (Istanbul, 1987)
Kathleen Stewart Howe Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine (California Academy of Sciences, 1997)
Alexander Keith Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion derived from the Literal Fulfilment of Prophecy, Thirty-seventh edition (London, T. Nelson and Sons, 1859) [Includes engravings by his son George Skeene Keith based on Daguerreotypes.]
Yeshayahu Nir The Bible and the image: The history of photography in the Holy Land, 1839-1899 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985)
Nissan Perez Focus East: Early photography in the Near East (1839-1885) (Abrams, 1988)
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