Impressions of the Land

For four decades, Vivienne Silver-Brody has collected photographs of Palestine/Eretz Israel taken from the nineteenth century until the turn of the 21st, creating a multi-faceted photographic narrative of the land. This book presents some three hundred of the most striking photographs in her collection and includes a comprehensive narration of the history of local photography and the unique story of her collection. This is both a tale of many people with shared historical backgrounds relating to the land and a showcase of the potential within photography to encompass the very fabric of life. The diversified perspectives, landscapes, portraits, lifestyles, dress, traditions, and customs manifest in this album, bring to life the history of photography of this land, which is one shared by the peoples that call it home. For the last section of the book, Silver-Brody invited sixty individuals—photographers, scholars, artists, curators, and collectors from different religious, cultural, and national backgrounds—to choose a single photograph from her collection and to write a short essay relating to it. These texts together offer a fascinating and wide-ranging narrative, thus adding significant historical relevance. A unique voice that reaches beyond politics and religion Presents a photographic history of the Land of Israel as a shared place rather than as disputed territory Photographs by Yaacov Ben Dov, Alfons Himmelreich, Hanna Safieh, Drora Spitz, Moi Ver among others Look inside