I found Issam Nassar's article about 19th century photography of Jerusalem to be very interesting. I haven't extensively studied photography, but I am aware of how images can be somewhat distorted to evoke a specific emotion. It was enlightening to read about how photography of the city of Jerusalem during the 19th century was manipulated, either consciously or subconsciously, to please those who were buying and viewing the photos.
I found it interesting that most of the photography of Jerusalem included no people, and if the people were included, they were depicted as insignificant. I think the reason for this is that people in Europe and America wanted to view Jerusalem as it was depicted in the Bible, and not what it was at the present time. I think that part of the mindset of most people who practice religion is the need to have what they've been taught confirmed in some way. These photographs that are supposed to depict Jerusalem and its religious sites are a way for people to confirm what images they have formed from reading the Bible.
I also found it interesting that photographers during this time added captions that had such strong biblical references. I think that this also happened because of my previous point. This was something I found interesting because photographers were labeling sites as religious relics instead of what they truly were. This makes me wonder if they captioned their photographs this way to make more money, or because they themselves wanted to believe that these sites were truly holy places discussed in the Bible.
This article gave me a new insight on how photography is depicted and the emotions it brings to people. It also helped me understand how people of the world viewed/wanted to view Jerusalem. I look forward to hearing Nassar's thoughts and opinions tomorrow in class.
I found this article to be very interesting as well. It is not surprising that photographers in those times wanted to keep with the mysticism of Israel and the idea of Israel that the Bible depicted. I still think this happens often today. Also, often photographers try to point out their political views and find specific scenes or images to pursue their political agendas. Nassar brought up a good point that we should always view the picture somewhat in the photographers eyes in order to understand what the picture is really of and the meaning behind it.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Yeah, that point about photographers attaching inaccurate caption beneath their photographs just reminded me of the like when all the holy things that supposedly happened at mount Zion were moved, and suddenly happened at Golgotha instead. People have been attaching old myths to new and different places forever it seems, yet because photography is a partly documentary art, these instances of appropriating myths to different places is preserved by photographs.
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