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At the meeting of the French Academy of Sciences on January 7, 1839, the world was introduced to the first and most advanced commercial photographic process known as the daguerreotype. This major historic development represented a fast growing technological tool embraced by “governments, missionary organizations, and research institutions to support such diverse activities as archeology, the biological and geological sciences, ethnography, and travel writing (for the production of travel guides).” ² In the wake of the daguerreotype, the French physicist and politician, Dominique Francois Jean Arago (1786-1853), expressed immense enthusiasm with this new invention. He recognized its huge benefits within one branch of science.

How archeology is going to benefit from this new process! It would require twenty years and legions of draftsmen to copy the millions and millions of hieroglyphics covering just the outside of the great monuments of Thebes, Memphis, Karnak, etc. A single man can accomplish this same enormous task with the daguerreotype. ³

With the development of more advanced photographic processes, such as the collodion process, European photographers identified the importance of documenting images of the Near East. Many of them converged in Palestine to capture its archeological sites, biblical scenes and cultural artifacts. Palestine became one of the most photographed places during the nineteenth century.

Maison Bonfils

In 1867, the French photographer Félix Bonfils established Maison Bonfils, a commercial studio in Beirut, Lebanon which produced one of the largest photographic archives documenting Middle Eastern cities, ancient sites, monuments, and its indigenous people classified as ethnographic types. These images, which were largely intended for consumption by the burgeoning tourist market, today constitute a treasure trove of Middle Eastern photography. By 1871, Bonfils reported that his prolific commercial atelier had produced 591 negatives from various sites around the eastern Mediterranean, ‘principally pictures of Jerusalem’ but also views of Egypt, Syria and Greece. These negatives produced 150,000 individual prints and 9,000 stereoscopic views.⁴ “Today we can appreciate such photographs both as beautiful compositions and as documents that help illuminate nineteenth-century cultural history.”⁵

While the tourist market was the primary audience for the Bonfils enterprise, the images produced by the studio were also intended “to capture what they imagined was a timeless, unchanging Middle East on the disruption by external imported modernity.”⁶ Adrien Bonfils, son of Félix Bonfils, recognized the impact of industrialization on the physical and social landscape of the Middle East. His words in 1898 set forth “a sense of urgency, outrage and professional obligation” to document for posterity a visual record of the transforming landscape of the Middle East.⁷ In the spirit of visually recording sites of cultural heritage at risk, many holy places, such as the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, were photographed by the Bonfils studio.

The Via Dolorosa

Around 1875, Félix Bonfils and his associates embarked on a photographic mission to document the processional path that Christ took to his crucifixion on the Via Dolorosa (Latin for “Sorrowful Way”). For centuries, it has been a biblical route which has been sacred to Christians during their pilgrimage in Jerusalem. Dating back to the Byzantine era and during the ages that followed, there have been modifications in the direction travelled by Christ in the Bible. Under Franciscan Custody of the Holy land in the fourteenth century, a number of events during Christ’s crucifixion on the Via Dolorosa — referred to as the fourteen Stations of the Cross — were firmly established in Holy Scripture and on the physical site in Jerusalem. This winding path of 2000 feet along the Via Dolorosa in the Old City of Jerusalem starts near the location of the former Antonia Fortress where Christ was condemned to death by Pontius Pilate. This symbolic pathway ends in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which houses the traditional site of Calvary where Christ died on the Cross, and the tomb in which he was laid to rest.

For Christians, the Garden of Gethsemane, which is at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem outside of the Old City, is regarded as sacred ground which the Bonfils studio photographed during their documentation of the fourteen Stations of the Cross. According to the four canonical Gospels, the Garden of Gethsemane, with its small olive groves, symbolizes the location where Christ engaged in sorrowful prayer after the Last Supper on Good Friday. Often referred to as “Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane,” it is at this site where Christ was arrested the night before his crucifixion.

The fourteen Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa leading up to Christ’s entombment at the Church of the Sepulchre are as follows:

On the Via Dolorosa

Plan of Jerusalem by the American Colony, ca. 1890 (Malikian Collection)

Station 1: Christ is condemned to death by Pontius Pilate at the Praetorium
Station 2: Christ takes up his Cross
Station 3: Christ falls for the first time under the weight of the Cross
Station 4: Christ meets his Mother, Mary
Station 5: Simon of Cyrene helps Christ carry the Cross
Station 6: Veronica wipes the face of Christ with a cloth
Station 7: Christ falls for the second time
Station 8: Christ consoled the weeping women of Jerusalem
Station 9: Christ falls for the third time

At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Station 10: Christ is stripped of his garments (“Division of the Robes”)
Station 11: Christ is nailed to the Cross (Latin Calvary)
Station 12: Christ dies on the Cross (Greek Orthodox Calvary)
Station 13: Christ is taken down from the Cross
Station 14: Christ is laid in the tomb

The Via Dolorosa

by Jack Persekian

Approximately 150 years after the Bonfils studio documented the fourteen Stations of the Cross, the artist and photographer, Jack Persekian, embarked on a project in 2022 to retrace and visually record the cobblestone lined route on the Via Dolorosa and the symbolic tomb of Christ within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Persekian’s extensive photographic study of this sacred religious pathway, which includes the Garden of Gethsemane, stands in contrast to the images produced by the Bonfils studio some thirty-six years after the inception of photography, and before the sweeping changes brought about by modernity. In spite of the passage of time and the changes that were predicted by Adrien Bonfils in 1898, the current exhibit, Via Dolorosa, captures a revered site in Jerusalem which continues to have profound spiritual meaning for the faithful.

Jack Persekian is currently the Founder and Director of Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art and Gallery Anadiel in Jerusalem. Previously, he held the position of Director and Head Curator of the Palestinian Museum (2012-2015); Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation (2009–2011); Artistic Director of the Sharjah Biennial (2007–2011); Head Curator of the Sharjah Biennial (2004–2007); Founder and Artistic Director of The Jerusalem Show (2007–present), and Qalandiya International (2012-2014).

Persekian’s exhibitions and projects include: The Hejaz Railway in Palestine, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah; Under the Tower, with artist Els Vanden Meersch at the Medewerker – Cultuurcentrum Ter Vesten, Beveren, Belgium; Past Tense, at the Birzeit University Museum, and the Jerusalem Quarterly, issue of Spring 2019 # 77, Institute of Jerusalem Studies; The Khalidi Library Jerusalem: Knowledge, Place and Time – Inaugural exhibition (2018); After Matson, W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem (2017); In the Presence of the Holy See, Manger Square, Bethlehem and Dheisheh Refugee Camp (2014); Nablus Soap performances (2010-12) at the Beirut Art Center; Abu Dhabi Art (with Tarek Atoui); ICA London; Hammer Museum – LA, MIT – Boston; MoMA – NY; The New Museum – NY; Rote Fabrik – Zurich; Darat Al Funun – Amman; Artspace – Sydney; the Adelaide Festival of Arts, Australia; Wall of Soap at the World Economic Forum, the Dead Sea Movenpick, Jordan (2004).

Persekian is the recipient of the Order of Culture, Science and Arts, Innovation level, from the State of Palestine (2016).

Persekian lives and works in Jerusalem.

• Works Cited
  • Nassar, Issam, “Photography as Source Material for Jerusalem’s Social History,” in Transformed Landscapes: Essays on Palestine and the Middle East in Honor of Walid Khalidi (Cairo: The University in Cairo Press, 2008), 138.
  • Freund, Gisele, Photography and Society, (London: Gordon Fraser, 1980), 26.
  • Szegedy-Maszek, Andrew, “The Genius of Félix Bonfils,” in Archeology Archive, Volume 54, Number 3 May/June 2001. https://archive.archeology.org/0105/abstracts/athens.html
  • Ibid., 2
  • Woodward, Michelle, “Between Orientalist Clichés and Images of Modernization,” in History of Photography, 27:4 (2003), 368.
  • Charney, Gavin, E.S., The Image of the East: Nineteenth-Century Near Eastern Photographs by Bonfils, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 1

This exhibit extends its appreciation to Matt Long, “Landloper,” and Elisa Leopold Moed, founder of “Travelujah” for their descriptions of the Stations of the Cross.

https://landlopers.com/2011/04/03/walking-via-dolorosa-stations-cross-jerusalem-guide
https://www.travelujah.com/stories/visiting-stations-cross-via-dolorosa

Photographs in this exhibit are in the Malikian and Persekian collections. They may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the permission of Joseph Malikian and Jack Persekian.