A New Art in an Ancient Land: Palestine through the lens of early European photographers

A New Art in an Ancient Land: Palestine through the lens of early European photographers giving birth to Jesus -almost a "curse," as twain puts it.Many of the early Western travellers to Palestine did not hesitate to trust their first impressions of the land, which were recorded in their diaries and journals.at the same time, as Rosovsky points out, visual artists followed a very different approach: Just like painters, photographers selected and "edited" the scenes they captured.the brush and lens portrayed things differently from the pen because writers could describe both the good and the bad in one book, while painters and photographers had but one shot at a scene, and depictions of dirt, poverty, or misery did not sell.2 thus, a discrepancy emerges between the narrative and the visual accounts of the same subject: while literature might be expected to have a natural bent for imaginative departures from reality, in this context it turned out to be very focused on the present day and interested in the current conditions of the natural and social environment.on the other hand, while photography was acclaimed as an extraordinary tool for depicting reality as accurately as ever thanks to the precision of science and technology, in Palestine it often turned away from contemporary subjects in order to search for evidence of a timeless past of biblical memory.in the nineteenth century Palestine was indeed a neglected province of the ottoman Empire, but since Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 and his subsequent campaign along the Palestinian cities of the coast -Gaza, Jaffa, Haifa and acre -the Holy land attracted more and more interest in the West.Because of its paramount significance for Christianity, but also for its crucial position on the route to Syria and india, Palestine became the target of several ventures, mainly led by French and British explorers.inspired by a wave of enthusiasm for the exotic and the sacred -both abundant in the Holy land -many pioneer photographers crossed the Mediterranean Sea to capture images that the European public was eager to see.the first photographers heading eastwards to Palestine were Frenchmen Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet, Horace Vernet, Girault de Parangey and Swiss-born Canadian Pierre Joly de lotbinière.the year 1839, writes Howe, saw "Goupil-Fesquet anxiously peering at the silvered plate in his mercury vapor development chamber, hoping to see a miniature of Jerusalem appear.Goupil-Fesquet photographed Jerusalem between 11 and 14 December 1839, a scant three months after Daguerre's process was demonstrated in Paris." 3 From a technical point of view, daguerreotypes presented two main limitations: even if quite sharp and detailed, the positive image on the silver plates could not be reproduced; moreover, the process required an exposure time of several minutes, which ruled out any chance of taking spontaneous pictures of people.this constraint may help to explain why the production of the first photographers was almost entirely dedicated to landscapes and architecture.Many of these early works were included in the album Excursions Daguerriennes: vues et monuments les plus remarquables

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