Damascuspoort te Jeruzalem 1854 - 1856

This photograph of the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem was made by Auguste Salzmann sometime in the 1850s. Salzmann was commissioned to produce photographic studies of the Holy Land. But this was no simple act of documentation: instead, it came out of a feverish period of French and European colonial expansion into the region. Salzmann’s images were made to accompany an argument about the true history of the region. His intention was to use photography to prove the archaeological record of the Bible. What might seem like a neutral recording of the architecture of Jerusalem was really about staking a claim on the history of the city and promoting a European understanding of its cultural heritage. The use of photography lent credibility to this project in ways that a painting never could. And so the image became a tool of cultural imperialism. By looking at the institutional history of the French state at this time, we can understand how photographs like this came to be so much more than just a picture.