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Bab al-Maghariba or Dung Gate is one of the least photographed gates of the Old City of Jerusalem. Also known as Mughrabi Gate - and not to be confused with its namesake, one of the internal gates allowing entrance into al-Aqsa Mosque from inside the Old City walls - the history of this southern gate can be examined from the few old photographs and maps that are available. The gate's changing appearance is partly documented, partly deciphered in this photo essay by Jean-Michel de Tarragon, photo archivist for École Biblique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imaging and Imagining Palestine takes us to the archive of early Palestinian photography. The book offers a selection of essays on the photographic collection during the British Mandate period in Palestine. The contributors reveal a world known to Palestinians outside the photographic frame. Through unearthing the Palestinian photographic archive, the book curates and visualizes Palestinian life and resistance during the British Mandate and before Israeli colonization. Imaging and Imagining Palestine demands the viewers of the photographic archive to read these visuals through an Indigenous framework that insists on seeing the agency of Palestinians in these photographic encounters. Indigenizing photography allows us to take risks in adopting a radical imagination that invites us to think about the liberatory aspect of documenting, archiving, and worldmaking for Palestinians that could have been realized had history taken another turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1864, French humanist and collector Honoré d'Albert, duc de Luynes (1802-1867) spearheaded a scientific exploratory mission from Beirut, Lebanon, to Petra, Jordan, with the professional expertise of photographer Louis Vignes (1831-1896), geologist Louis Lartet (1840-1899), and naturalist Gustave Combe (1832-1905). The team surveyed the basin of the Dead Sea, researching historical sites associated with the biblical stories (including the ancient "cursed" cities) and the basin's geological features. A year later, de Luynes financed the photographic campaign of Henri Sauvaire (1831-1896) to Hebron, West Bank, and the crusade castles of Karak and Shubak, Jordan. Accompanied by an archive of photographs, drawings, and maps, and recorded as a compilation of travelogues in Voyage d'exploration à la mer Morte, à Petra, et sur la rive gauche du Jourdain (Paris, 1874), the mission documents a French approach to investigating the historical roots of Christianity in Palestine and encounters with the local inhabitants in the waning decades of the Ottoman Empire. Created shortly before the establishment of the Palestine Exploration Fund, the photographs of living cities - Nablus, Jenin, and Hebron - and of natural landscapes by the Dead Sea, along with the geological maps and the travelers' texts, may contribute unique historical sources in the context of Yazid Anani's Cities Exhibition project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]