Tel-Aviv se livre @ Brussels' Book Fair

This unique picture of the beginning of the edification of Tel Aviv shows cohorts of camels crossing the Yarkon River (in Arabic, Yauni) to route the materials of constructions of the first districts of the future city, still vast expanse of sands. In the background we can see the city of Jaffa. This picture was taken by one of the photographers of the American Colony (religious community of American Christians established in Jerusalem in 1898). It is very probable that this picture was taken by Eric Matson, between 1909 and 1910, on glass plate, and colorized by his companion, Edith Yantiss. This photograph has been acquired between 1926 and 1931 by a Dutchman, Arie Speelman, trader of grains, during both trips that he performed in Holy Land with his wife. Speelman bought 1200 plates of glass in the picture-store of the American Colony, demanding that they should be colorized. Edith Yantiss accomplished this incredible job, by sometimes painting certain details with a brush of one single hair. This collection of extremely rare pictures of Palestine at the end of the XIXth century was preserved by the Speelman family in Amsterdam. One of the grandchildren of Arie, Helen Speelman, gave it recently as a donation to the Museum of Jewish History of Amsterdam for a nice exhibition of about fifty photographs. For this occasion, a work called « In the footsteps of Abraham - The Holy Land in hand-painted photographs » has been edited, by Richard Hardiman and Helen Speelman.