Picture a Day: Coming Next Week: Who Was the American Preacher Who Took This Rare 1859 Picture?

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Coming Next Week:
Who Was the American Preacher Who Took This Rare 1859 Picture?

The answer next week in www.israeldailypicture.com and in The Jerusalem Post Magazine.

Does anyone know who the Rabbis are?

Picture taken in 1859 or 1860. This picture was part of a collection found in a garage sale 20 years ago.
Who was the photographer?

Enlargement. Who are the rabbis?

2 comments:

Joseph.EDecember 14, 2012 at 5:41 PM
http://www.luminous-lint.com/app/image/34155416638763473925/
ReplyDelete
AnonymousFebruary 6, 2013 at 4:13 AM
Mysterious photo.
ReplyDelete

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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.