I am very excited to announce the release of a new photo collection from BiblePlaces.com and LifeintheHolyLand.com. The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection includes more than 4,000 high-resolution photographs taken by professional photographers living in Jerusalem from 1898 until the 1940s. I’ve worked with a team for the last five years organizing and improving this collection so that the photos are the highest quality, accurately identified, carefully organized, and elucidated by observations of well-known 19th-century explorers.
The collection spans 8 CD volumes and is being released one volume a month beginning this week.
Volume 1 is “Northern Palestine,” and it includes 600 photos organized in the following categories:
- Acco (11 photos)
- Benjamin (43 photos)
- Caesarea (31 photos)
- Caesarea Philippi (14 photos)
- Ephraim and Manasseh (34 photos)
- Galilee Hill Country (20 photos)
- Haifa (27 photos)
- Huleh Basin (12 photos)
- Jaffa (51 photos)
- Jezreel Valley (47 photos)
- Mount Carmel (15 photos)
- Mount Hermon (20 photos)
- Mount Tabor (12 photos)
- Nazareth (32 photos)
- Samaria city (19 photos)
- Sea of Galilee (41 photos)
- Sea of Galilee, Capernaum (31 photos)
- Sea of Galilee, Tabgha (15 photos)
- Sea of Galilee, Tiberias (39 photos) – free PowerPoint here
- Sharon Plain (17 photos)
- Shechem area (22 photos)
- Tel Aviv (43 photos)
All images are included in high-resolution jpg format as well as in annotated PowerPoint files. The cost for the CD is now only $20, with free shipping in the U.S. While volumes 2-8 are not yet available individually, the complete collection is available in DVD format for $99.
I believe this is the finest collection of historic photographs of the Middle East available anywhere in any format.
You can read more about the collection here:
Complete Collection: Volumes 1-8
As with everything we do, the goal is your complete satisfaction. If you don’t like it or need it, return it for a full refund. If you do like it, we would really appreciate it if you’d pass the word on. Review copies are available by request.
I plan to post on this blog some interesting images from the CD over the next few weeks.
Nazareth with Mount Tabor in the distance Date: between 1900-1920
2 thoughts on “New Photo CDs: The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection”
I Just looked over the PowerPoint slides. Oh my! These shots are spectacular. All the years I have been traveling in Israel, I have never seen it that clear. What a wonderful resource to show what the country looked like fifty to a hundred years ago, and it probably had not changed all that much from Bible times. Good work, Todd.
I have looked at this collection at the Library of Congress website, but there are so many photos and there are multiple versions of (what appear to be) the same shot. It takes a lot of time and work to find what you want, choose the best photo and then crop it and clean it up. That's what makes the BiblePlaces' edition so valuable. The best photos have been selected, and all the photo editing has been done. It is so much more enjoyable and rewarding to look at the Matson collection in the BiblePlaces' format than at the LOC website.