ABSTRACT
Offering a panoramic view of regional photographic production pre-Zionism, as well as international distribution and reception, this chapter observes how the invention of photography accelerated a desire to document the region and transformed local economies and civil spaces. This chapter begins with the travelers whose photographic equipment and viewpoints changed not only the international image of the region, but the ways in which Palestine viewed itself, or told its story to the world. This chapter outlines the shaping of this photographic viewpoint, its producers and audiences, suggesting this will impact the shaping of Zionist photographic perspective, which produced and reincarnated Palestine as Eretz Israel in global discourse. It then moves on to explore the foundation of the first school for arts and crafts founded by the Zionist movement, Bezalel, suggesting it is there, in its hallways and workshops in Jerusalem, that those earlier experimentations have been further incorporated into Zionism and that this should be seen as precursor to the later production of the Zionist photographic archive.
