Jerusalem

An exceptional Grand Tour souvenir album composed of 26 American Colony albumen photographs of sites in the Holy Land from the Jaffa Gate to the Stations of the Cross Jericho Bethany and the River Jordan to Bethlehem and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

1922 · rif. 59753 — Jerusalem Palestine: The American Colony Grand New Hotel 1922. Oblong 4to. 12.25 x 9.5 in. 26 leaves unnumbered. on thick gray paper stock. With 26 mounted sepia-tinted albumen photographs sized 8.5 x 11 in. nearly all w/tri-lingual captions photographer’s imprint & inventory number w/in negative at lower fore-edge minor creasing to a few fore-edges slight over-exposure to a couple images at the lower margins. Contemporary calf-backed olive/myrtle wood beveled boards binding Jerusalem “five-fold” cross carved on center of front cover minor scuffing rubbing very minor split at center glue seam front & back covers minor chipping to lower rear corner brown morocco rebacking still a VG exemplar w/ gift manuscript note “From Genevieve March 2 1922” on front pastedown presented to James Duval Phelan 1861-1930 banker philanthropist and former San Francisco Mayor and later California Senator 1914-1920. Ironically the album appears to have been presented to the rabid yellow peril anti-Japanese & Chinese politico while he traveled around the World through Japan China Hong Kong India Egypt Palestine Constantinople and Europe with Phelan’s Phoenix rising from the ashes San Francisco bookplate on front pastedown. This marvelous souvenir photo album composed of Ottoman-era albumen images captured not only recreated iconic religious scenes but also captured Jerusalemites in city streets and the Holy Land in the opening decades of the 20th Century. The album opens with the image of the “Street Scene inside Jaffa Gate” which captures Frederick Vester & Co.’s American Colony shop and photography studio in the right fore-ground of the image with bustling street and clock tower prominent in the center of the image. The American Colony produced created developed printed hand-coloured and sold thematic photographs stereoviews panoramic photos postcards custom hand-coloured glass lantern slides along with deluxe thematic souvenir albums such as this one. The series included here which incorporates a view of the room for the Last Supper and a nicely composed image of a beautifully terraced Garden of Gethsemane follows with the Stations of the Cross. The often incorporate residents in their daily lives watering donkeys pilgrims praying at Stations merchants and those wandering through the gates and winding streets of the ancient city. The photographers have captured the baroque & ornate Station Calvary the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a view of the Dome of the Rock and a teeming scene of women men and families seated and standing praying at the Wailing Wall. The American Colony emerged from the evangelical “End Times” beliefs inculcated by Horatio Spafford and Anna Larssen Spafford in 19th-Century Chicago who despite their profitable lectures the support & encouragement of Dwight Moody and at best questionable financial chicanery shipped out for the Holy Land in 1881 ahead of their creditors for $ 100000. Eventually the largely “celibate” commune controlled by “Messages from God” to Anna Spafford and through lectures and charity merged with Olof Larson’s “Doomsday” Larsonite believers along with Frederick Vester and a number of photographers began operating the American Colony store near the Jaffa gate and vastly expanding their tourist photographic operations. By 1910 they had several employees and the noted American Colony photographers such as Elijah Meyers and Lewis Larsson extended their talents across Palestine capturing not only the River Jordan but life in Bethlehem Bethany Syria Damascus and many other locations across the Ottoman Empire controlled areas. Although the American Colony projected a harmonious community bound together by simple Christian piety the sect was tightly controlled by Anna who not only restricted and monitored all correspondence by Colony members ordered shunning of those who ignored her dictates and maintained direct control over their finances. She also enforced marital celibacy until she “received a Message” that her daughter Bertha and Frederick Vester could marry in 1904. See: Tom Powers Jerusalem’s American Colony and Its’ Photographic Legacy 2009; Barbara Bair The American Colony Photography Department: Western Consumption and “Inside” Commercial Photography Jerusalem Quarterly No. 44 2010 p. 28. The American Colony, Grand New Hotel, hardcover