Bethlehem People and Places

This collection is made up of digitised photographs held at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. The images show various types of people and places around Bethlehem in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, captured by various European and North American photographers, mostly working in the photographic service of the American Colony in Jerusalem. In this period Bethlehem was intensely photographed by photography companies catering to western ideas of the biblical Bethlehem.

Many of the images reflect this western biblical gaze in their composition and choice of subject matter. The collection is part of the Library of Congress project within the Planet Bethlehem Archive (click on the Related Project link below to explore the wider project).