Picture a Day: 150-Year-Old Pictures Released for Online Viewers Thank You Library of Congress for Responding to Our Request

Thursday, November 15, 2012

150-Year-Old Pictures Released for Online Viewers
Thank You Library of Congress for Responding to Our Request

The "Golden Gate," also known as Sha'ar
HaRachamim. On the other side of the wall is
the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock
(1865) View Golden Gate feature here

The Library of Congress has an amazing archive of antique photographs, including the 22,000 pictures taken by the American Colony Photographic Department in Jerusalem. It also contains photos by photographic pioneers and explorers who visited the Holy Land in the second half of the 19th century.

Click on the photos to enlarge.

Click on the captions to see the originals.

Panoramic view of Jerusalem, taken from the Hill of Evil Counsel - Abu Tur (1865)

One explorer was Captain Charles Wilson of the British Ordnance Survey and the Palestine Exploration Fund. Two of the pictures taken by Wilson's photographer, Sgt. J. M. McDonald, are available in the Library of Congress archives for researchers, but they had never been digitalized and made available on the Internet.

Israel Daily Picture requested that the Library remove copyright restrictions on the 147-year-old photos. The pictures were posted on the Internet this week and appear here. The Library's site allows visitors to enlarge the photographs to see amazing details, in these cases more than 12 MB in size.

Other photos from Wilson's expedition appear in the Palestine Exploration Fund's gallery, and one picture of the Haram el-Sharif/Temple Mount and Western Wall appears here.

Panoramic view of Haram el-Sharif/Temple Mount and Western Wall (Credit: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1865)

1 comment:

shlomaNovember 18, 2012 at 9:34 PM
please see
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?s=3&sType=Rel&rCol=The%2520Middle%2520East%2520in%2520Early%2520Prints%2520and%252E%252E%252E&r=12fhj&rDiv=Dorot%2520Jewish%2520Division&rOper=2&submit.x=6&submit.y=8
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Academic Journal

Zionist Message Hidden within Antique Pictures of the Holy Land

by Lenny Ben-David

Published in the Jewish Political Studies Review

[Abstract] A 110-year-old trove of pictures taken by the Christian photographers of the American Colony in Jerusalem provides dramatic proof of thriving Jewish communities in

Palestine. Hundreds of pictures show the ancient Jewish community of Jerusalem’s

Old City and the Jewish pioneers and builders of new towns and settlements in the Galilee and along the Mediterranean coastline.

The collection, housed in the U.S. Library of Congress, also contains photographs

from the 1850s and 1860s, the first years of photography. These photographs provide a window

rarely opened by historians to view the life of the

Jews in the Holy Land.

View

The Zionist Message Hidden within Antique Pictures of the Holy Land

Readers Comments. Thank you!

"As a Christian who has visited the Holy Land twice I appreciate the pictures you are providing almost daily. They help fill in a lot of gaps as far as recent history is concerned. Thanks and keep 'em coming." -- L. Kansas City, MO USA.

"This site has become a wonderful blessing and I enjoy it so very much....Thank you and God bless you." -- J.A.B

"Excellent comments with interesting topics and very useful resources. Thanks for sharing." -- O.O.

"I thought I knew my new homeland when I made Aliyah 7 years ago but your pictures and captions have filled in many blanks for me. Can't begin to tell you how much your blogs mean to me!" Sincere thanks! -- LS

"Truly amazing. These kinds of places should get a visit more often, aside from the common beaches that we used to go to during vacations. We get to learn about the place's history, the stories behind the buildings and monuments." -- C.A.

"Thank you for sharing these amazing photos. They bring back the pages of Daniel Silva's Fallen Angel so vividly. You not only write but also teach and I am fortunate that I am one of your readers. You are the reason my husband I traveled to Israel and we want to go back. Keep writing!" -- D.

Israel Daily Picture --

More than 2,000,000 visitors to the site

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Now cited by the Library of Congress to update, correct, and provide context to its pictures

More readers' comments

"I love this blog. I have to restrain myself almost every day from writing to you to say, 'Wow,' that's cool. But today, I cannot restrain myself." -- AA

אתר ייחודי זה מוקדש לצילומים ישנים של ארץ ישראל והוא מלא וגדוש להתפקע בצילומים מפתיעים ולא מוכרים, שנלקחו בעיקר מהאוספים העצומים של ספריית הקונגרס האמריקני בוושינגטון. אוהבי הנוסטלגיה וההיסטוריה של ארץ ישראל ימצאו שם את כל מה שאיוו לו
"דא, "עונג שבת

These are amazing pictures. The history of Jerusalem had always been a spectacle for me. I'm really hoping to get here after my tours in Jordan. -- MB

I have been receiving your "Picture a Day" and all I can say about it is it "Makes my Day" -- TW

"This stuff is amazing. You are providing a resource for the Internet generation that used to be available only to readers of tomes like From Time Immemorial or perhaps even only writers of books like that" -- GA, Israel

Thanks. This is a real treasure trove! -- BB, Toronto, Canada

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.