PALESTINE – 452 Postcards, c. 1920s-1930s

A very large and impressive collection of postcards presenting Palestinians and scenes across Palestine.

Postcard album, 1920s-1930s, containing 452 postcards (approx. 90 x 140 mm.) illustrated with depictions of Palestinians. Modern blue leather presentation folder (350 x 350 mm.) (lightly scuffed).

A SUPERB COLLECTION OF POSTCARDS DEPICTING PALESTINE before the creation of the state of Israel. Most with photographic illustrations, approximately half in colour. Published across nations including Britain, France, Germany, USA, and in Palestine itself often by the famous Palphot company, these postcards give an important history of foreign and domestic presentations of Palestinian identity in the time of the British Mandate. Semmerling, in the best study on the subject, notes how important postcards were in the forging of national selfhoods. At a time of domestic uncertainty, when Palestine ceases to be controlled by the Ottomans and instead emerges from WWI under British rule, postcards become ‘vessels that contain and export the presentation of the national self’. Often, however, this process was appropriated by those with a distinctly colonial, Orientalist perspective. ‘The expansion of imperialism encouraged the need and provided the opportunity to search out and create new photographic scenes, objects, civilisations, and people to be presented to British audiences. Likewise, that ideology gained from the ways in which such scenes and subjects were photographed. Photographed scenes and subjects provided sustenance to imperialist ideology, as they represented relations, and justifications of those relations, between Britain and its colonies’ (Semmerling, Israeli & Palestinian postcards).

Please note that this lot is the property of a private collector.