Jerusalem’s landscape, as we know it today, is merely a surface layer, a slice in a long tumultuous history that has seen people and civilizations successively taking over from preceding ones. Over time, layers are obscured and sometimes obliterated to the point where one can find only a few traces or ruins, if any! Since the turn of the nineteenth century and the invention of photography, our relationship to how we see, comprehend, and communicate our understanding of history and time has dramatically changed.

Superimposing an additional layer, a photograph taken today of the same location, over that taken by the American Colony photographers some hundred years ago, shot from the same spot and the same angle, would move us between two distinctive times. It allows us to study the changes that occurred, compare the various times, align the physical transformations with the events that took place in the city and around the region during the last century, and deduce from these observations all the agendas at play, then, now, and still to come.

This body of work, exhibited at Gallery Anadiel at New Gate, is an attempt to encourage people, especially Jerusalemites, to reassess their relation to this city, reexamine it carefully, indulge in its details, and love it – not for what it was and what it symbolizes, but for what it can be. And as Mies van der Rohe put it so eloquently: “God is in the details.”

Herod’s Gate

Jack Persekian, 2017
Historical photograph title: Sheep market outside Herod’s Gate, Jerusalem
Creators: American Colony Photographers
Date: Photographs taken between 1900 and 1919
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Historical photograph credit: John D. Whiting Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Outside Damascus Gate

Jack Persekian, 2017
Historical photograph title: Pack train outside Damascus Gate, Jerusalem
From: Hand-colored photographs of Jerusalem and Palestine, 1919, photograph album
Creators: American Colony Photographers and Painters
Date: Photographs taken between 1900 and 1919
Medium: Hand-painted monochrome photographic print
Historical photograph credit: John D. Whiting Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Via Dolorosa

Jack Persekian, 2017
Historical photograph title: Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem
From: Hand-colored photograph album of Jerusalem and Palestine, 1919
Creators: American Colony Photographers and Painters
Date: Photographs taken between 1900 and 1919
Medium: Hand-painted monochrome photographic print
Historical photograph credit: John D. Whiting Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Sultan Suleiman Street

Jack Persekian, 2017
Historical photograph title: German officers heading a line of 600 prisoners captured near Jericho, July 15, 1918
Creators: American Colony Photographers
Date created/published: July 15, 1918
Historical photograph credit: Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

New Gate

Jack Persekian, 2017
Historical photograph title: Arab demonstrations on October 13 and 27, 1933. In Jerusalem and Jaffa. Arab demonstration at New Gate. Police cordon stopping the procession. Jerusalem, October 13
Creator(s): American Colony Photographers or G. Eric Matson
Date created/published: October 13, 1933; Medium: Dry plate glass negative
Historical photograph credit: Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Jaffa Gate 1917

Jack Persekian, 2017
Historical photograph title: The surrender of Jerusalem to the British, December 9, 1917. The first British guard at Jaffa Gate
Creators: Hol Lars (Lewis) Larsson, American Colony Photographers
Date created/published: December 9, 1917
Medium: Dry plate glass negative
Historical photograph credit: Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Jerusalem from North, Nablus Road

Jack Persekian, 2017
Historical photograph title: Jerusalem (Al-Quds). First view of Jerusalem from the north
Creator(s): American Colony Photographers
Date created/published: ca. 1898
Historical photograph credit: Matson Photograph Collection,
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

St. George’s Playground

Jack Persekian, 2017
Historical photograph title: Jerusalem from the north
Creator: American Colony Photographers
Date created/published: ca. 1898
Historical Photograph Credit: Matson Photograph Collection,
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.