Photographing Biblical Modernity

This open access book focuses on the previously inaccessible photographic collection of Frank Scholten (14,000 prints, 12,000 negatives, 64 albums and significant collected ephemera) produced during his time in Palestine in 1921-23. The collection documents a queer, upper class, Dutch Catholic convert's view of Palestine in the years that the British Mandate was formally established. Escaping prosecution in the Netherlands on charges of homosexuality and indecency in 1920, Scholten fled to Palestine to produce an illustrated Bible. The photographic collection he produced engaged with the modern social life of Palestine rather than the monuments and holy sites more typical to the photographic histories of the region. The Scholten collection contains important ethnographic documentation of early Mandate society, but also yields insights into the ways in which Palestinian communities mobilised and deployed religious narrative with the rise of nationalism. The queer subtext of the collection also highlights the way masculinity and men's bodies informed both religion and nationalism in Palestine. This book's interdisciplinary methodology shows the significant confluence of religious narrative and nationalism - and its gendered context - during the shift from Ottoman to British rule, through the lens of a unique collection of photographic material. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.