Auguste Salzmann
1854
Jérusalem, Beit-Lehem, Vue générale
[Jerusalem]

Salted paper print, from paper negative, Imprimerie photographique de Blanquart-Évrard
22.6 x 27.6 cm (8 7/8 x 10 7/8 ins) (image) 44.6 x 60.3 cm (17 9/16 x 23 3/4 ins) (mount)
 
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, Accession Number: 2005.100.373.125
 
Curatorial description (accessed: 3 October 2016)
Viewed from afar, the small, dark windows of Bethlehem's geometric dwellings evoke the words of Salzmann's countryman, the explorer François-René de Chateaubriand: "This sacred land dares no longer express its joy, and locks within its bosom the recollections of its glory." Other accounts, however, describe a bustling nineteenth-century city that received nearly as many visitors as the much larger Jerusalem. Ignoring the everyday life of Ottoman Palestine, Salzmann presented a vacant, closed land.
 
LL/69139