The Holy Land 1910 - 1921

• Chord bound boards in the Japanese style with textured paper over boards and impressed gilt titling.
• Internal binding band has split at the head fold.
•  Hand bound cream colored heavy paper leaves each with blind stamped “Jamal Brothers” credit and date of 1921. Each leaf has a photogravure pasted in (24 images one to a leaf) and protective tissue-guard.
• Below each gravure are hand-lettered, inked titles and the signature “S. Narinsky.” 
• Uncommon, beautifully hand-made book featuring 24  photogravures by the Russian Jewish photographers Sonja Narinsky (no dates) and Shlomo Narinsky (1885-1960) taken between 1910 and 1921.
• These images are often found produced as postcards and a handful of these hand-made books were produced in varying sizes, quite possibly made for specific individuals.  Some have been found as numbered editions while others were published in loose-leaf clamshell box collections.    
• Images presented in this handmade book are as follows in the order they appear: 
• David’s Tower 
• The Rabbi and His Greatgrandson 
• The Chapel of the Slaughter of the infants 
• The shepherd calling his sheep 
• The site of the Crowning with Thorns 
• Pool of Hezekiah 
• Between the Orange gardens 
• On the Way to Bethlehem 
• An old man in Jerusalem  
• Mountain view of Sea of Galilee 
• House of Simeon the Tanner, Taffa 
• Aia Karim, the birth-place of St. John the Baptist 
• The Golden Gate 
• Water carriers in the Mosque of Omar Court Yard 
• A cemetery in Sichron Ta’akov 
• Ahron Ahronson 
• Water mills at the River Yarkon 
• A street in Jerusalem 
• Brook Cherith near Jericho 
• Foundations of the Tower of Antonia 
• A 110 years old Jew of Tiberias 
• Haifa, at the foot of Mount Carmel 
• The Tower of David, Jerusalem 
• Mosque of Omar

Some spotting to the glassine and borders of the mounting plate.

"These pictures are original photogravures, made on the basis of photographs by S. Narinsky between 1910 and 1920, and marketed by Jamal Bros. of Israel from 1921 onward. Narinsky was a somewhat mysterious figure, whose story has only recently come to light. He was born in 1885 in a small town in Russia, where he later belonged to a group of young socialist Zionists. At the beginning of this century he emigrated to Palestine. Among his early friends in the 'workers commune' in Jerusalem were Yizchak Ben Zvi (later the second President of Israel), David Ben Gurion and other leaders of the socialist movement in Palestine. Narinsky soon dropped out of active politics and soon devoted himself to photography and painting. In 1904 he spent a short time in Paris, where Cézanne became his idol. It may well be that he also became acquainted with the work of Demachy, Stieglitz and Evans during this visit; at any rate, their influence is visible in Narinsky's portraits and city-scapes. In 1916, together with many other Jews carrying Russian passports, he and his wife Sonia were deported by the Turks to Egypt. There it was his wife who supported them both by photography. As she was the only woman photographer in Cairo at the time, she was able to take photographs of women which could not be taken by men: women without veils in their homes and in the harems. The couple went back to Palestine after the war, and Narinsky continued his photographic activities. In 1920 he sold a selection of photographs to Jamal Brothers, and left again for Paris. There he changed his name to Neroni ('candle of poverty') and, in a small circle of friends, became known as 'Neroni, the Oriental Painter'. In strong, vivid rainbow colours he painted symbolic forms of flowers and gardens. 'Each of my paintings is a prayer', he told a visitor to his studio in the Rue de la Paix in 1937. In 1940 he was imprisoned and sent to a concentration camp, first at Drancy and later at St. Denis. His ways found ways to inform their friend Ben Zvi about her husband's fate, and in the spring of 1944, she and her husband were taken, via Germany and Austria, to Constantinople by the Gestapo. There they were exchanged by the British for a German spy from Palestine. Thereafter, the couple lived in Haifa. An unsuccessful painter, Neroni became the instructor of photography at a vocational school for girls, where he was adored by his students. He died in Haifa in 1960. (Dr. Tim N. Gidal).