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I have seen Jerusalem from an airplane, through Jaffa Gate and over the Old City wall. I’ve seen it at night, the full moon heavy over the Temple Mount, and with the sun warming the honey-colored limestones. I have seen Jerusalem in pen and ink, hushed black and white and dazzling color—though I’ve never seen it in person. The Jerusalem I know best is a city of images, an assortment of photographs gathered to illustrate articles in BAR.
The search for the perfect photograph begins months in advance, when we send a list of desired subjects to a handful of master photographers—a list that will change and change again as we are swayed by the dozens of gem-like transparencies they submit. Fortunately, our selection is limited by certain prerequisites: The photo that opens Hillel Geva’s article, “Searching for Roman Jerusalem,” in this issue, for example, had to include both David’s Citadel and the Temple Mount. These ease the agonizing task of eliminating, selecting, rejecting, adjusting and, eventually, deciding.
Occasionally, the photograph comes before the article. A new picture book arrives in the office. It includes a stunning shot of Jerusalem, taken from an unusual angle that reveals something exceptional about the city. The image of the Damascus Gate in this issue’s “Searching for Roman Jerusalem” was such a picture—I saw it first over a year ago, in an oversized coffeetable book, Israel: Splendors of the Holy Land. At the time, we had no appropriate article to accompany the picture, so I stashed in my memory the image of the sharp streets, slicing through the overgrown markets inside the northern entrance to Roman Jerusalem. Like Pirandello’s six characters, the photograph awaited an author. Finally, Hillel Geva came along, explaining that these modern streets retain the line of the carefully planned Roman city.
Someday we will publish a crisp black-and-white photo of the Ecce Homo arch, a Roman triumphal archway traditionally identified with the spot where Pilate declared, “Behold the Man.” Taken 150 years ago, by a British sergeant, this print shows most of the Ecce Homo arch before a convent was constructed over half of it. And BAR’s sister magazine, Bible Review, will include a Chagall watercolor of a matter-of-fact, modern Adam and Eve, sharing an apple at their small kitchen table. The accompanying articles have not been written yet, but when they are, I’m ready.
Choosing pictures for our WorldWide department, which appears inside the back cover of each issue, is much simpler. Ostensibly, this page offers a glimpse of what was happening outside the Holy Land—in Pompeii, Carthage, even Mexico—during the Biblical period. But in truth WorldWide is a fabulous excuse to publish pictures simply because they are beautiful, because they have artistic merit (whatever that is), because a few people here delight in them.
As we embark on Archaeology Odyssey—a new magazine covering the origins of Western civilization, from Spain to Persia—I feel some trepidation: With the whole Mediterranean world before us, how will we ever narrow down the picture choices? But I did just see a curious 19th-century illustration of the world’s first underwater excavator—equipped with pick and butterfly net as he explores the floor of a lake. Now we just need the article.
I have seen Jerusalem from an airplane, through Jaffa Gate and over the Old City wall. I’ve seen it at night, the full moon heavy over the Temple Mount, and with the sun warming the honey-colored limestones. I have seen Jerusalem in pen and ink, hushed black and white and dazzling color—though I’ve never seen it in person. The Jerusalem I know best is a city of images, an assortment of photographs gathered to illustrate articles in BAR. The search for the perfect photograph begins months in advance, when we send a list of desired subjects to a handful […]
