»Erez Israel from the Air 1937–38«

Abstract

Abstract In September 1938, German-Jewish merchant, publisher and patron Salman Schocken, who emigrated to Palestine in 1934, presented an album of 40 aerial photographs of the Land of Israel as a sign of gratitude to the well-wishers on his 60th birthday the previous year. The pictures were taken by Hungarian-Jewish photographer Zoltan Kluger, who had worked in Berlin since the 1920s and became the »chief photographer« of Keren Hayesod and the Jewish National Fund after his immigration at the end of 1933. There is only little information about their collaboration on this extraordinary project and the album of which a copy has been preserved in the Archives of the National Library of Israel. »Erez Israel from the Air 1937–38«, as the album is also known, with Klugerʼs stunning aerial shots, shows a unique view of historical and biblical landscapes, the Judean Desert and the Jordan Valley, but first and foremost they are a visual record of the architectural history of the Yishuv: starting with the settlements of the First Aliya, the founding of Kibbutzim and Moshavim, the urban development of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, up to the Stockade and Tower settlements since the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936. They are presented in the following article. Readers are invited to view the whole album and the photographs at a higher resolution online here: https://rosetta.nli.org.il/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE38046962.