Imaging and Imagining Palestine

Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens, 1918-1948
Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-90-04-43793-7
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 3, 432 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 887 g

Reihe: Open Jerusalem

Imaging and Imagining Palestine is the first comprehensive study of photography during the British Mandate period (1918–1948). It addresses well-known archives, photos from private collections never available before and archives that have until recently remained closed. This interdisciplinary volume argues that photography is central to a different understanding of the social and political complexities of Palestine in this period.

While Biblical and Orientalist images abound, the chapters in this book go further by questioning the impact of photography on the social histories of British Mandate Palestine. This book considers the specific archives, the work of individual photographers, methods for reading historical photography from the present and how we might begin the process of decolonising photography.

"Imaging and Imagining Palestine presents a timely and much-needed critical evaluation of the role of photography in Palestine. Drawing together leading interdisciplinary specialists and engaging a range of innovative methodologies, the volume makes clear the ways in which photography reflects the shifting political, cultural and economic landscape of the British Mandate period, and experiences of modernity in Palestine. Actively problematising conventional understandings of production, circulation and the in/stability of the photographic document, Imaging and Imagining Palestine provides essential reading for decolonial studies of photography and visual culture studies of Palestine." - Chrisoula Lionis, author of Laughter in Occupied Palestine: Comedy and Identity in Art and Film

"Imaging and Imagining Palestine is the first and much needed overview of photography during the British Mandate period. From well-known and accessible photographic archives to private family albums, it deals with the cultural and political relations of the period thinking about both the Western perceptions of Palestine as well as its modern social life. This book brings together an impressive array of material and analyses to form an interdisciplinary perspective that considers just how photography shapes our understanding of the past as well as the ways in which the past might be reclaimed." - Jack Persekian, Founding Director of Al Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem

"Imaging and Imagining Palestine draws together a plethora of fresh approaches to the field of photography in Palestine. It considers Palestine as a central node in global photographic production and the ways in which photography shaped the modern imaging and imagining from within a fresh regional theoretical perspective." - Salwa Mikdadi, Director al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, New York University Abu Dhabi

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sanchez Summerer, Karène

Zananiri, Sary

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Naher & Mittlerer Osten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword

Salim Tamari

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Transliteration

1 Imaging and Imagining Palestine: An Introduction

Sary Zananiri

Part 1: In and out of the Archives: Photographic Collections and the Historical Case Studies

2 ‘Little Orphans of Jerusalem’: The American Colony’s Christian Herald Orphanage in Photographs and Negatives

Abigail Jacobson

3 Swedish Imaginings, Investments and Local Photography in Jerusalem, 1925–1939

Inger Marie Okkenhaug

4 The Dominicans’ Photographic Collection in Jerusalem: Beyond a Catholic Perception of the Holy Land?

Norig Neveu and Karène Sanchez Summerer

5 Bearers of Memory: Photo Albums as Sources of Historical Study in Palestine

Issam Nassar

Part 2: Points of Perspective: Photographers and Their Lens

6 Resilient Resistance: Colonial Biblical, Archaeological and Ethnographical Imaginaries in the Work of Chalil Raad (Khalil Ra'ad), 1891–1948

Rona Sela

7 Open Roads: John D. Whiting, Diary in Photos, 1934–1939

Rachel Lev

8 Documenting the Social: Frank Scholten Taxonomising Identity in British Mandate Palestine

Sary Zananiri

Part 3: After Effects: Methodologies, Approaches and Reconceptualising Photography

9 Edward Keith-Roach’s Favourite Things: Indigenising National Geographic’s Images of Mandatory Palestine

Yazan Kopty

10 Decolonising the Photography of Palestine: Searching for a Method in a Plate of Hummus

Stephen Sheehi

11 Urban Encounters: Imaging the City in Mandate Palestine

Nadi Abusaada

12 Epilogue

Özge Calafato and Aude Aylin de Tapia

Über Autor(innen)

Karène Sanchez Summerer is Associate Professor at Leiden University. Her recent publications include a volume edited with Sary Zananiri titled European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948: Between Contention and Connection (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and a volume edited with Inger Marie Okkenhaug titled Christian Missions and Humanitarianism in The Middle East, 1850-1950: Ideologies, Rhetoric, and Practices (Brill, 2020).


Sary Zananiri is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Leiden University. He completed his Ph.D. at Monash University (2014). His recent publications include European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948: Between Contention and Connection (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), edited with Karène Sanchez Summerer.