Unsilencing Palestine 1922–1923: hundred years after the beginning of the British Mandate – the Frank Scholten photographic collection revisited

ABSTRACT

This piece presents an interview conducted by Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri with Salim Tamari and Yair Wallach about the Frank Scholten photographic collection (now available with Creative Commons access), discussing the archive's significance and use for researchers of the history of Mandate Palestine.During the turbulence of the period after the First World War, Dutch photographer Frank Scholten (1881-1942) travelled to Palestine with the aim of producing an ‘illustrated Bible'. He arrived in Palestine in 1921, where he stayed for two years. While the bulk of his photo collection consists of images of Palestine, his camera lens gives a snapshot into modernity in the Eastern Mediterranean more broadly. The entire Frank Scholten collection, consisting of 12,000 negatives and 14,000 prints, represents a work in progress towards a 16-volume set of books on the ‘Holy Land', only two volumes of which were ever published.One of the hallmarks of Scholten’s collected work is the thoroughness with which he imaged Palestine. His images of people cut across religious and confessional lines, ethnic backgrounds, and class and urban-rural divides. He imaged people at work as well as in their leisure time, but most of all, he imaged people in the context of their daily life, rather than divorced from the landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Palestine
• historical photography
• Frank Scholten
• photo archives
• social history
• queer Middle East history
• British Mandate
• Palestine

Acknowledgements

This interview, as well as the whole research project on the Scholten collection since 2017, has been possible thanks to the constant and generous support of NINO and its directors, C. Waerzeggers and W. van der Wall, as well as the support of C. van Zoest and the financial support of NWO (Dutch Research Council), CrossRoads (VIDI project 275-25-002, PI Karène Sanchez Summerer).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by NINO Netherlands Institute for the Near East; see agreements with Groningen University (OA).

Notes on contributors

Karène Sanchez Summerer

Karène Sanchez Summerer is Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern Studies and Co-director of the Centre for Historical Studies at Groningen University, The Netherlands. Her research and teaching interests include Christian Arab communities of and in the Middle East, a relational cultural and social history of Ottoman and Mandate Palestine, and minorities in and from the Middle East. From 2017 to 2022, she was the PI of the research project (2018–2022), ‘CrossRoads- A connected history between Europeans’ cultural diplomacy and Arab Christians in Mandate Palestine' (project funded by The Dutch Research Council NWO), and from 2017-2021, co PI of MisSMO consortium project (‘Christian missions and societies in the Middle East 19th-20th centuries’). She is the co-editor of the series Languages and Culture in History with W. Frijhoff, Amsterdam University Press. Her last publications include Sanchez Summerer, K. and Zananiri, S., Imaging and Imagining Palestine- Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens (1918-1948) (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2021); Sanchez Summerer, K. and Zananiri S., European Cultural diplomacy and Arab Christianity in Mandate Palestine. Between Contention and Connection (Palgrave McMillan, 2021); Irving, S., Nassif, C. and Sanchez Summerer, K., The House of the Priest. A Palestinian life (1885–1954). Leiden/ Boston: Brill, CJMS 7, 2022.

Sary Zananiri

Sary Zananiri is a cultural producer, theorist and heritage specialist. He is currently writing a monograph, Photographing Biblical Modernity: Frank Scholten in British Mandate Palestine (IB Tauris, forthcoming). He has co-edited two volumes with Karène Sanchez Summerer, Imaging and Imagining Palestine: Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens (Brill, 2021) and European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine: Between Contention and Connection (Palgrave McMillan, 2021). He has written numerous book chapters and journal articles on Palestinian visual culture. Recent exhibitions include the Qattan Foundation, Ramallah (2023), University of Groningen Library (2023), INALCO, Paris (June-July 2022), the Mawjoudin Queer Film Festival, Tunis (September 2022), the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (December 2021-February 2022), the National Glass Museum, Wagga Wagga (July-November 2021), Rijksmuseum Oudheden, Leiden (May-October 2020) and Der Haus Der Kunst der Welt for ALMS, Berlin (June 2019). He was a Postdoctoral Fellow on the NWO funded project CrossRoads: European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine 1918-1948 and the Netherlands Institute for the Near East at Leiden University, a visiting scholar at Dar al Kalima in Bethlehem, an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens and is currently a cultural heritage consultant in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.