Picture a Day: New Photo Added to Last Month's Essay on Zion Gate

Sunday, October 2, 2011

New Photo Added to Last Month's Essay on Zion Gate

The Library of Congress photograph collection includes another unusual 100-year-old photo of the Zion Gate of Jerusalem's Old City which was missed in earlier research. The photo had been captioned "Portal of David."

See previous photo essays on Zion Gate, Damascus Gate, and Lions Gate.

Click on the photos to enlarge.
Click on the captions to see the originals.

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Published by Lenny Ben-David

About the title photograph of Jerusalem

The photograph, from the Library of Congress collection, was taken between 1860 and 1880 by Frank M. Good, according to the Library. But we can narrow down the dates a little further. The photo shows the Churva Synagogue dome on the left horizon between the two mosques' domes. The Churva was finished in 1864.

Most of the Library of Congress pictures are from photographers from the "American Colony" in Jerusalem, a group of Christian utopians -- often eccentric -- who lived in Jerusalem between 1881 and the 1940s. They returned to the U.S. and bequeathed their massive collection to the Library of Congress in 1978. The photos were digitalized in recent years.

A history of the American Colony Photography Department can be found in Jerusalem's American Colony and Its Photographic Legacy by Tom Powers and in an Institute for Palestine Studies article, Western Consumption and "Insider" Commercial Photography. Unfortunately, the latter article pays little attention to the photographs of Jews and Jewish sites.

Click on the photos to enlarge. Click on the captions to see the originals.

According to the Library of Congress, "there are no known restrictions on publication" of their photographs.