Palestine

1940 · réf. ABC_48425 — 1940. Contemporary embossed brown calf with flowers on the front and back board and an aluminium view of David's Tower and Jerusalem's old city wall embedded in the front board. Oblong album 30 x 20 cm. With 128 gelatin silver prints most ca. 6.5 x 9.5 cm. Beautiful album with 128 photographs of Egypt and Palestine present day Israel and the West Bank during the British Mandate. It was likely compiled by a British soldier who was stationed in the Middle East during the 1940s. Some of the photographs are numbered in the negative and may have been made by important photographers active in the area at the time like G. Eric Matson and his wife Edith the founders of the Matson Photo Service. The images show Cairo and various locations in Palestine including Jerusalem Bethlehem Nazareth Tiberias Sea of Galilee Nathanya Tel Aviv the Jordan river Haifa Beirut and the Dead Sea. Other than important locations like churches and gates the photographs also show many locals including for example street barbers in Cairo shepherds and farmers in Palestine and beautifully dressed women in Haifa. In the back of the work a few dried leaves from local plants have been mounted namely orange lemon fig eucalyptus grapevine and mulberry. The eucalyptus leaf still retains some of its scent.The edges and vorners of the boards are somewhat scuffed with some loss of material at the head and foot of the spine and around the edges of the embedded aluminium plate. The photographs mounted on the inside of the front board are slightly stained the fig leaf mounted on one of the final pages is damaged and the cyprus leaf is missing. Otherwise in good condition. unknown