Research Catalog

Title

Revealing the Holy Land : the photographic exploration of Palestine / essay by Kathleen Stewart Howe.

Author

Howe, Kathleen Stewart.

Publication

Santa Barbara, CA : Santa Barbara Museum of Art ; Berkeley : Distributed by the University of California Press, 1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
• University of New Mexico. Art Museum.
• St. Louis Art Museum

Description

144 p. : ill., maps; 29 cm.

Summary

This is the catalog for an exhibition of ninety nineteenth-century photographs drawn primarily from the world-class collection of Michael G. Wilson. Included are the starkly beautiful photographs of Sergeant James McDonald's surveys of Palestine and Jerusalem recently discovered photographs by Ernest Benecke and the rare photographs by Maxime Du Camp taken in 1850 as he traveled with Flaubert. With the invention of photography and the increasing popularity of travel in the mid-nineteenth century, the Holy Land became one of the most photographed places on earth. Interest in Jerusalem and Palestine was particularly pronounced in England, partly because of England's need to control its routes to the riches of India, but also because of Britain's cultural identification with the people and lands of the Bible. Imperial ambition and deeply ingrained cultural associations resulted in a surge of photographic activity in Palestine. McDonald's photographs from surveys of Jerusalem and the Sinai epitomize the dual imperatives of Bible and Empire. Photography provided a new standard for authenticity in pictorial representations. Early photographs were considered the ultimate bearers of "reality" at a time when viewers had not yet lost their naive faith in the objective accuracy of photography. Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, the Holy Land drew legions of photographers: amateurs recording a stop on the Grand Tour, academics pursuing archaeological theories, military surveyors--all trying to capture the truthfulness of a land that had enormous spiritual, emotional, and political connotations for most of the Western world. What they saw, and how they saw it, are the themes of this beautifully recorded collection. ... Publisher description.

Subject

• Wilson, Michael
• Wilson, Jane
• 1800-1899
• Photography > Palestine > History > 19th century

Genre/Form

History

Note

• Exhibition itinerary: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Jan. 29-May 31, 1998; University of New Mexico Art Museum, Oct. 13-Dec. 13, 1999; St. Louis Art Museum, Feb. 23-May 23, 1999.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-140) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Foreword / Karen Sinsheimer -- Palestine and the nineteenth century / Nancy Rosovshy -- Revealing the Holy Land: ninetheenth-century photographs of Palestine / Kathleen Stewart Howe -- Map of Ottoman Palestine -- Notes -- Plates -- Chronology -- Biography of James Mcdonald -- Selected bibliography -- Index -- About the authors.

ISBN

• 0899510949 (hardcover)
• 0899510957 (softcover)

LCCN

^^^97011157^//r97

OCLC

• 36672024
• SCSB-12483888

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library