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Historical representations of the region of Israel and Palestine from the mid-19th to the early 20th centuries illustrate an outsider viewpoint of the complex political, social and religious dynamics of the region.

One such traveler was Francis Frith, a prosperous 19th century British grocer and amateur photographer who spent his wealth traveling through Britain with the goal of photographing every village and town. Before his stint in domestic photography, Frith made trips throughout the Middle East, photographing the sites for the British public. Francis FrithÕs album Sinai and Palestine, published in 1862, was comprised of photographs from travels in the late 1850s. Remarkably, this relatively rare and original version of the album exists in the museumÕs collection. Though Frith was a devout Quaker, the album was not a photo-diary of a pilgrim to the Holy Land. Rather, he advises the readers that he has tried his best to capture the feeling of the land for their own intellectual and spiritual pleasure. He counts his views as comparable to those that travelers would encounter in their efforts to do the obligatory Holy Land trip.

- Jennifer Patton, UCR/CMP Art History Fellow