The Dominicans’ photographic collection in Jerusalem: beyond a Catholic perception of the Holy Land?

The photographic collection of the French biblical and archaeological school in Jerusalem is constituted of more than 25,000 glass plates, photographs and slides of Palestine from the last quarter of the nineteenth century onwards, reflecting the Catholic institutions presence in the region but also diverse realities of the social history of Palestine.

The history of this collection is intimately linked to that of the Ecole biblique, founded in 1890 in Jerusalem and whose programme of studies included annual trips to research the lands of the Bible, especially Jerusalem and Palestine. With the help of the Assumptionists, the Dominicans of the Ecole biblique learned photography in order to reproduce archaeological sites, sites connected with Christian and Moslem holy places, the history of their own religious house as well as scenes of everyday life and portraits. These photographs were taken as much like the rubbings, the drawings and the sketches used during lectures or published in the Revue biblique. The period of the British Mandate includes more photographs about everyday life scenes than archaeological sites; they reveal a proximity of the photographers with the local Arab population. The collection is also constituted by digitised photographs of the other Catholic institutions in Palestine (Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Assumptionists, White Fathers, Salesians, Rosary Sisters, Sisters of Sion, St Joseph Sisters).

The chapter analyses the photographer’s points of view on Palestine and its society, bringing to light not only the exchanges between these various actors but also the gendered dimension of their activity. Who photographed the sisters and how? Is Arabisation of the clergy noticeable from the photographers’ point of view? How did photographs present their actions of collecting Orientalist knowledge, theatre and music, education and medicine developing in these Catholic institutions? These collections will thus be decoded as ‘action-sources’ bearers of a discourse on the history of Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century, in order to understand the social imprint they intended to represent.