Patmos-The island and monastery before 1866

This albumen print of Patmos, an island in the Aegean Sea, was produced by Francis Bedford sometime in the mid-19th century. The image is part of a book called "The Holy Land" depicting religious sites that were considered important to Western Christian culture. Bedford was commissioned to produce images of the Holy Land by Queen Victoria, whose royal patronage gave the images significant cultural authority. The photograph depicts a rocky outcrop where St. John is said to have written the Book of Revelation. The image is less about the aesthetics of the landscape and more about the religious and political symbolism it holds. Bedford’s images served to reinforce certain ideas about cultural heritage, which were linked to Britain’s imperial power at the time. Examining such photographs requires us to delve into the social and institutional contexts in which they were produced, to look at how these images and their royal patronage shaped views of the East at the time.