Historic Views of the Holy Land: Bible Places-American Colony Collection

This very large module (1.4 GB) is available on DVD for OS X for an additional $10, or by Easy install, or as a direct download link for Mac OS X.

This Accordance module includes all 8 volumes of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection of photos from the Historic Views of the Holy Land series published by Bible Places. The module includes all the images in high resolution, together with searchable descriptions, captions, bibiography, and Scripture links.

History of the Collection
Founded in 1881 by Horatio Spafford (author of the famous hymn, It is Well With My Soul), the American Colony in Jerusalem operated a thriving photographic enterprise for almost four decades. Their images document the land and its people, with a special emphasis on biblical and archaeological sites, inspirational scenes, and historic events. One of the photographers, G. Eric Matson, inherited the archive, adding to it his own later work through the “Matson Photo Service.” He eventually donated all the negatives to the U.S. Library of Congress, which has made them available to the public.

This collection includes more than 4,000 selected photographs of sites and scenes from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Quotations from 19th-century travelers give additional context to many of the photographs.

Publisher and editor Todd Bolen introduces the collection with lists of what attracted him to this collection (detailed in the module):

We love the photographs of the land before modern alterations. . .
We love the photographs of the traditional way of life. . .
We love the photographs of world-changing history unfolding. . .
We love the photographs of so many things that we’ve heard about, but not seen. . .

See article.

You may also be interested in the photo collection, Historic Views That Have Vanished.