Fascinating reading! Questions popped out of my head on every page, yet he answered most of them by the end of the article. I had no idea that many (most?) late 1800-early 1900 photographs of Jerusalem and the countryside there left room for questions: Why were so many incorrectly identified? For example, the early 1900 picture in his article identified the subject as 'The Tower of Antonia' but was really a minaret of the Aqsa Mosque. How did THAT happen? Accidental? Intentional? Why?? As I read, I wondered WHY then there were so few people in the photographs...did they just not have enough foresight to consider the value of the people in the photos for later researchers? Was it on purpose?...
Especially, although a photograph was of one thing, WHY did they describe something else? For example, The Dome of the Rock was spoke of as "The Site of Solomon's Temple." And the picture mentioned above, of the lone dead tree with the minaret in the background, captioned as "The Temple Area. Tower of Antonia." Also, the many photographs of people, the land, etc. seemed to always reflect Biblical stories. The Biblical stories are awesome, but how can every photo lead to them...for example the 1870's photo of the old man talking with an old peasant woman in a wheat field...Ruth and Boaz...Why?.....
By this time my mind was suspicious of some unspoken, subtle plot for some unknown purpose....conspiracy theory, huh....questioning, "Why the extreme slant to relate the people and the land to Christian Biblical stories during this time period?" Again, I love Biblical stories, but this was noticeably extreme....as was mentioned in our class: it may not be about the beautiful stone gate but rather the man that sits by that gate everyday.....And then Nassar offered my wondering mind an explanation: "...this paradigm of European colonial expansionism was further complicated by the special connection of the country to the biblical history of both Christianity and Judaism as was fully exploited to serve European colonial expansionism. Calls for a PEACEFUL CRUSADE to establish a European Christian enclave in the Holy Land...." Ah HAH...there it was! The unspoken purpose was to condition the minds and hearts for another type of crusade? Wow! It makes sense....but then, why did they quit doing this, or did they???
Also, I had to smile....Russia self-appointed itself as protector of the Christian-Orthodox community there, France did the same thing for the Latin Church, and Britain signed on as protector of the Jewish community...Where was the US? Did they not get involved in this concept, to be left out in the event something moved forward, in some direction, for some purpose (peaceful crusade even)? It is not like the US to not be involved in the matter of others....nuff said!
I thoroughly enjoyed this article...it really offered interesting information. Especially, it offered the concept of wondering about the proverbial man sitting by the gorgeous gates...what do these early photographs show us about what was going on in the minds of the photographers, therefore others of the time period, since he was commissioned by them and photographed to entertain/inform the viewing audience...what was Paul Harvey's rest of the story.....
The peaceful crusade. Yup, that just about hits the nail on the head huh? Well I wonder if British, French and other European governments and institutions advocated or promotes for bible-centered photography, or alternatively censored non-biblical photography? That would've been a question for Nassar. Oh well. Why did the British support Jews? Did Jews in Britain lobby the Houses of Lords and Commons more than Arabs or Muslims? Also whom were photographers working for at the time? Were they freelance? They were certainly responding to market demand for biblical photography, but were media execs of the time telling photographers to photograph this and that? Conspiracy theories filled my head too...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post, Aaron. I wonder about those things also...If the British Mandate began with Britain in Palestine about 1918, would that have been cause for some of the British support of Jews? But what about the late 1800's? I don't know.....I'd like to think the photographers were freelance, but I don't know...even if they were, their promotion surely spoke of an understood mentality, huh? If it was more than market demand, that would hint at a much larger purpose...I still think these photographs, which lacked people and showed sites (deemed holy sites even when erroneously labeled), might have been to keep the idea of religious ownership in the forefront of minds and hearts...after all, if no one was there, it must be the viewers land of religious holiness to claim....and no one was there, according to the (unknowingly false) photographs people saw of 'their' holy land.....hmmmmm.....
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