Lecture Summaries:
10 December, 2003

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The Reverend L.E.C. Evans Memorial Lecture 2003:
Jerusalem in Original Photographs:  1850-1920
by
Shimon Gibson
Senior Associate Fellow, W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem

Since its foundation in 1865 the Palestine Exploration Fund has amassed some of the most outstanding and unique photographic archives of the Holy Land.  These include images of Palestine, Israel, Syria, Trans-Jordan, and Lebanon dating from the 1850s to the present day.  Its core collection reflects the fascination of the Levant for Europeans of the Victorian and Edwardian ages who were captivated by its 'exotic' qualities. 

Some of the images are the work of commercial photographers such as Bonfils, Robertson, Beato, Frith and Graham.  Others were taken by amateurs with a passionate interest in the Holy Land, whose photographic albums have been donated to the collection. 

At the same time, the collection faithfully records the wide-ranging interests of the Fund itself, and many of the photographs were taken by those engaged o its own projects - among them Kitchener, Bliss, Macalister and Garstang.  Central to these activities in the nineteenth century was the exploration of Jerusalem.

The Fund has recently published a volume of these photographs, selected and with an accompanying text by Shimon Gibson, who has been studying the picture archive for many years.  In this volume he presents a selection of images from what must surely be one of the most photographed cities in the world.  Many of the pictures represent buildings and scenes no longer in existence, or which have been radically changed. 

In this lecture, which accompanies the launch of the book,images from the collection will be presented to evoke the sights, the atmosphere, and the smells of nineteenth and early twentieth century Jerusalem - a city which, at this time was still essentially medieval, with its gates closed at night for much of the period and which lacked many of the comforts which the modern tourist takes for granted.