Maps 30.e.19

Imprint: Published by Authority of the Lords Commissioners in Her Majesty's Treasury. 1865.

Folio, Half-leather (original binding), measuring 526 x 377mm, titled in gilt 'Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem. Photographs. 1865' on front cover, and containing 77 prints, mounted either one or two to a page, recto only, with lithographed caption and photographer's credit beneath each image. The survey was originally undertaken to assess the water supply of the city and to investigate means of improving its sanitary conditions, but as Sir Henry James notes in his preface to the published report, the opportunity was also taken to pursue archaeological investigations and, 'In addition to the requirements of the Committee, I sent out a Photographic Apparatus to enable Serj. McDonald, who is both a very good surveyor and a very good photographer, to take photographs of the most interesting places in and about Jerusalem.' Charles Wilson also noted the supernumerary function of photography, commenting in his report that 'Photography was not considered an essential part of the survey; the views were taken at spare moments, and were intended to illustrate as far as possible the masonry of the walls and architectural details of the different buildings.' In fact, the body of the report makes extensive references to McDonald's photographs, as illustrating various points in the descriptions. The survey party reached Jerusalem on the 2nd October 1864 and remained in the city until early 1865. The composition of the images often bear a striking resemblance to the lithographs (from the author's own photographs) in Ermete Pierotti's 'Jerusalem Explored' (2 vols, London, 1864). This appeared early in 1864, and it is possible that volumes were available and that McDonald deliberately imitated Pierotti's viewpoints in his own photographs. Three of the photographs in the series, showing the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, are by Peter Bergheim, a converted Jew and one of the few professional photographers resident in the city at this period. Kathleen Howe suggests that as a local resident, Bergheim's presence might have been considered less intrusive than members of the British military (see her 'Mapping a Sacred Geography: Photographic Surveys by the Royal Engineers in the Holy Land, 1864-86,' in Joan M. Schwartz and James Ryan (eds.), 'Picturing Place. Photography and the Geographical Imagination' (I. B. Taurus and Co., London and New York, 2003), pp. 226-242, note 37.