Harvard Semitic Museum

Mary Inda Hussey

Sumerian Tablets in the Harvard Semitic Museum

Dror Wahrman

Mendel John Diness

Carney E. S. Gavin

Nitza Rosovsky

At a garage sale in Minnesota in 1989, a young American photographer, John Barnier, bought eight wooden crates containing over 130 glass plate negatives. Realizing that many of the negatives were of Jerusalem, he brought them to the Harvard Semitic Museum where they were eventually identified as the long-lost work of Mendel John Diness, who lived in Jerusalem in the 1850s and was the first photographer to learn--and practice--the art there. Until a decade ago Diness did not even appear in the annals of photography. It was Dror Wahrman, an Israeli historian, who discovered that Diness was a Russian Jewish watchmaker who arrived in Jerusalem in 1848 to pursue rabbinical studies. A year later he converted and his baptism by the Anglican bishop caused near-riots in the city's Jewish community. Having lost his Jewish clients, Diness supported his family by learning photography and eventually became the Holy City's first commercial photographer. This volume traces Diness' role in the history of photography and his life in Jerusalem and subsequently in the United States. From the uncovered negatives, 60 platinum prints were developed showing with utmost clarity rare views of Jerusalem and environs. Other photographs, lent by Diness' descendants, enhance this most unusual tale.

Harvard Semitic Museum

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