In Search of Biblical Lands

In Search of Biblical Lands
From Jerusalem to Jordan
in 19th-Century Photography

At the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Villa
March 2—September 12, 2011

In the 1800s travelers came to the eastern margins of the Mediterranean and encountered a landscape of belief, at once forbidding and monotonous. Propelled by a connection to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and encouraged by texts recently discovered in Egypt and Assyria, explorers, excavators, and entrepreneurs came to photograph places hitherto only imagined. This exhibition presents images of the region known variously as Palestine, western Syria, the Transjordan Plateau, and the Holy Land. Subjects range from architectural sites and strata to evocative geography and scenes of pastoral life.

from: The Getty Center