‘Bedouin Boy With Camel’: An Analysis of Archival Photographs of Bedouin Children in Palestine

Abstract

This study analyzes photographs found in historical archives of Bedouin children in Palestine from over a hundred years ago. The Bedouin children were photographed in their natural environment by foreign European photographers touring the Holy Land. Young children were photographed held by their mothers, at work, on a path, or near the tent. The research unravels the context in which the pictures were constructed, documented, and archived. The study explores how colonialist photography in the region generated tropes of presentation of Bedouin children and examines its effects on forms of representation of their childhood of the time. The Bedouin women’s inferior status in society and its impact on the documentation of women and children are also examined. The study highlights notions of other children dressing up as ‘Hebrew Bedouins’ for studio portraiture as part of an orientalist cliché.

Full text

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ycip20
Childhood in the Past
An International Journal
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ycip20
‘Bedouin Boy With Camel’: An Analysis of Archival
Photographs of Bedouin Children in Palestine
Edna Barromi-Perlman & Ruth Kark
To cite this article: Edna Barromi-Perlman & Ruth Kark (2022): ‘Bedouin Boy With Camel’: An
Analysis of Archival Photographs of Bedouin Children in Palestine, Childhood in the Past, DOI:
10.1080/17585716.2022.2087584
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17585716.2022.2087584
Published online: 12 Jul 2022.
Submit your article to this journal
View related articles
View Crossmark data

‘Bedouin Boy With Camel’: An Analysis of Archival
Photographs of Bedouin Children in Palestine
Edna Barromi-Perlman
a,b
and Ruth Kark
c
a
University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel;
b
Kibbutzim College of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel;
c
Department of
Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel
ABSTRACT
This study analyzes photographs found in historical archives of
Bedouin children in Palestine from over a hundred years ago. The
Bedouin children were photographed in their natural
environment by foreign European photographers touring the
Holy Land. Young children were photographed held by their
mothers, at work, on a path, or near the tent. The research
unravels the context in which the pictures were constructed,
documented, and archived. The study explores how colonialist
photography in the region generated tropes of presentation of
Bedouin children and examines its effects on forms of
representation of their childhood of the time. The Bedouin
women’s inferior status in society and its impact on the
documentation of women and children are also examined. The
study highlights notions of other children dressing up as ‘Hebrew
Bedouins’for studio portraiture as part of an orientalist cliché.
KEYWORDS
Bedouin; photography;
children; childhood; culture;
colonialism; postcolonialism;
palestine
Introduction
In this study, we analyse from a postcolonial perspective the photographic presentation
of nomadic Bedouin children in Palestine from the mid-nineteenth century, when pho-
tography was invented, and up to the mid-twentieth century. The underlying premise
of postcolonial analysis is that ‘photography itself serves as a vehicle for establishment
power mechanisms based on systems of oppression, and is used as a tool to convey ideol-
ogy and to manufacture narratives, myths, and national terminology’(Sela 2014, N/P). A
postcolonial approach inquires how interests and practices of representations cohere
(Said 1993). In the negligible existing number of photographs of Bedouin children in
the period under study found in our research, the children appear only from afar. More-
over, these pictures were archived and categorized according to the Western forms of cat-
egorization and classification. These archival systems and photographic tropes, that did
not reflect the children’s authentic culture or way of life, shaped the viewers’perception
of these children. On the face of it, there is little information in the photographs regarding
childhood among Bedouin tribes in Palestine. This lack of information and scarcity of
© Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group and the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past 2022
CONTACT Edna Barromi-Perlman Edna.barromi@smkb.ac.il; Ruth Kark ruthkark@mail.huji.ac.il University of
Haifa, Haifa, Israel; Kibbutzim College of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mount Scopus,
Jerusalem, Israel
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST
https://doi.org/10.1080/17585716.2022.2087584

images, accompanied by the fixed style of photographing children, served as an incentive
for our study. We wondered, why do the children appear from afar, do not fill the entire
frame, and are not dressed up for portraiture? Why are the photographs categorized in
such a manner?
Background for the Research
During the period under study, from the end of the nineteenth and during British
Mandate rule in the first half of the twentieth century, Western tourists photographed
in Palestine for leisure and personal endeavours. They were not under obligation to
note the specific location and data regarding the photographed people, tribes, and indi-
viduals. Furthermore, there existed a desire to create biblical reproductions, in which
people were presented as backward, primitive beings, ethnic types, and idle men in dilapi-
dated surroundings (Barromi Perlman 2017). Sela explains that a general colonial gaze
characterized this type of photography, particularly in the Holy Land, where indigenous
people were often presented in a biblical context or ‘seen from a patronizing point of
view’(Sela 2007, 108).
In these pictures, the Bedouin nomadic tribes living in the desert were perceived as
living an exotic life. They were photographed in their natural environment in or around
their tents or on desert paths. In the photographs taken usually from a distance, the chil-
dren appeared small; they did not create direct eye contact, often lacking a return of the
gaze. Many of these images of children found their way into archives under generic cat-
egorizations such as ‘Bedouin boy’of ‘Bedouin child’. Our survey of historical archives of
photographs of Bedouins in Palestine during this period has shown that the children were
rarely the focus of the pictures. We claim this was a form of ‘non-representation’of chil-
dren (Ledin and Machin 2018), which is a choice to omit a person or people, which results
in a lack of presentation, or non-presentation. Our argument is strengthened by the omis-
sion of Bedouin children as a distinct category in the archives. This void in the categoriz-
ation system served as a basis for a particular socio-historical viewing of the images, as is
explained by Graham-Brown:
When looking at photographs in the context of social history, other forms of meaning must
be taken into consideration. These include the context in which the photograph was taken,
the relationships of power, and ideological considerations which affected the photographer’s
choice of subject and the way the photograph might be interpreted by its viewers in a par-
ticular historical period. (Graham-Brown 1988, 3).
Western photography at the time observed people in colonial countries through their
own lens, resulting in a Western format of documenting reality. ‘The critique of colonial
photography is that it subjugates the indigenous inhabitants in the eyes of the
Western viewers. It manipulates scientific, realistic documentation into forms of control
by creating systems of categorization’(Barromi-Perlman and Kark 2019, 29). Sheehi
(2016) asks: ‘How does looking at photography from the ‘East’allow the photograph to
be read differently? …[M]ust photography not ‘look’and be looked at differently in the
context of the Middle East? (N/P). Building on Sheehi, we argue that foreign photogra-
phers in Palestine, who documented the Bedouin children, did so according to Western
structuring and viewing codes, as is shown in this study. We claim that this archiving
2E. BARROMI-PERLMAN AND R. KARK

practice that has remained to this day, potentially perpetuates an ideological and hege-
monic world view among Western viewers, who are the primary audience of these archi-
val images.
As demonstrated in Figure 1, this approach perpetuated a dismissive attitude towards
Bedouin children, as far as viewing and reading photographs are concerned. Figure 1
shows one of the few photographs in the Matson collection categorized under ‘children’.
In general, archives incorporate ‘texts and images that create connotations by association,
conveying ideological messages’(Barromi-Perlman 2011, 13). In the case of Figure 1, the
words ‘costumes’and ‘characters’precede the word ‘children’. Furthermore, the children
are referred to as ‘Children on Camel’, so that decoding the image of children with the text
contextualizes them not as children, but as ‘on camel’. In addition, ‘costumes’and ‘char-
acters’are the first and second textual signs in the caption, making ‘children’less signifi-
cant than costumes and culture. This categorization ranks the children’s importance as
last before the camel and creates a particular referent. It is not simply any child; it is a
nameless Bedouin child on a camel. ‘The very joint apperception of the photograph
and of the connotative textual message behind it is a process that binds together the
spectators as referents …capable of reading the archive’s codes, identifying them, and
interpreting them as visual symbols’(Barromi-Perlman 2011, 14). This example shows
how foreign photographers and archivists helped create visual social templates of
Bedouin children employing codification and categorization methods.
Most of the photographs selected for this study were taken more than a hundred years
ago, during the Ottoman Empire and the first two decades of the British Mandate in
Figure 1. ‘Costumes, characters, etc. Bedouin children on camel.’1900–1920. Library of Congress, G. Eric
and Edith Matson Photograph Collection. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/matpc.15115/.
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST 3

Palestine, beginning in 1920. At the end of the nineteenth century, the development of
photography and the unstable political situation in the Ottoman Empire enabled the
new technology to influence concepts of land ownership in Palestine. This new
medium drew the attention of the Western world and Europe to the region’s potential
economic development.
The European middle class that emerged following the industrial revolution had the
means and leisure to travel on Grand Tours. A growing number of its members responded
to the attraction of Palestine, which served as a magnet for photographers, pilgrims, tour-
ists, missionaries, and painters (Kark 2020; Bar and Cohen-Hattab 2003; Hannavy 2008). In
the period under investigation (1850- 1948), the region’s sites, ruins, and peoples had
been widely documented by European exploration expeditions. Sela writes that
‘Expeditions that included government and military officials, academic researchers and
scientists, writers, religious institutions, and commercial bodies were sent to explore
the region, with participating photographers and illustrators translating imperialist aspira-
tions and Western interests in the Near East into visual language’(Sela 2021, 198).
It is important to note that the explorations and scientific expeditions during this period
prepared the ground for the transfer of control in the region from Ottoman to British rule in
1917, by exploring, photographing, measuring and excavating the land and archeological
sites. The majority of the period’s photographs were found in institutional archives that are
a product of British imperialism of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The pictures reflect the
distinct colonial style of photographing and portraiture of indigenous populations. This
form, which is based on notions of appropriation and entitlement towards the locals that
developed throughout the British Empire (Barromi-Perlman and Kark 2019), applies to
the photographs of the Bedouins in Southern Palestine.
Archival Photographs of Children
This paper analyses eleven photographs of children selected from the fruits of extensive
research of archival material. We chose photographs that reflected our major themes for
analysis: children at work, mothers and babies, and Bedouin families outside their tent. For
comparative purposes, we chose a studio photograph of a child created by Avraham
Soskin, a professional photographer in Tel Aviv; a studio photograph of a family portrait
made in Europe; and three photographs of Jewish children from a private photo album.
The criteria for the selection were designed to generate a discussion on the distance from
the object, its background, proximity, angle, return and control of the gaze, composition,
categorization system, and contextual information.
The visual analysis used in this study incorporates different ways of selecting, interpret-
ing, and analysing data found in archives, publications, exhibits, and catalogues. We have
extensively mapped and surveyed academic publications of children’s images and
created a typology of photographs for this research.
1
On top of the visual data, our analysis deals with the photograph’s surface and its
materiality. Materiality relates to the archival textual data on the image’s surface
beyond the information in the picture. It includes captions written on the frame,
besides or on the reverse side of the image. The relevant text of the filing system and cat-
egorization records that engage with the past are also analysed.
4E. BARROMI-PERLMAN AND R. KARK

Our survey of the material created within the timeframe of this research (1850-1948)
revealed approximately 100 historical photographs of Bedouin children in Palestine.
They were either stereoscopic photographs, glass plates, or thirty-five-millimeter film
photographs. We found that across all the archives, these children were photographed
similarly in their natural settings: in the field, walking on a path, near the family tent, in
proximity to their mothers, and grazing areas; infants usually appeared held by the
mothers. We have not found any close-ups or portraitures of children in the ordinary
sense of the word in this time frame, in which the child’s image or face fills up the frame.
Photography of Bedouin Children in Palestine
Photography in Palestine played a part in spreading Eurocentric colonialism that entailed
establishing political, social, and cultural superiority over lands and peoples. ‘For the
European powers —the British and French in particular —the nineteenth century was
a century of discovery during which they extended their economic, political and cultural
hegemony over most of the non-industrialized world’(Nassar 2006a, 326). Assi (2018)
writes that the British considered the Bedouins a destructive race of foreign invaders
and illegal intruders involved in a constant struggle against modern forms of settlement,
progress, and economics.
The expansion of European colonialism was accompanied by efforts to create an objec-
tive, scientific categorization of the local population. Pultz explains that Europeans
exerted social control over colonized peoples by describing their bodies: ‘Photographs
seemed to be truthful, uninflected restatements of the world. The fact that the power
of the photographs to control and stereotype was invisible made them especially insi-
dious tools in the establishment and maintenance of colonialism’(Pultz 1995, 21).
Waites (2018)offers photographs as visual evidence combined with contextual appraisal,
since far from being objective photographs are open to readings and interpretations that
can be manipulated and coerced. In this context, colonial photography was used as a tool
for a combination of visual appropriation of land and control over its people (Barromi-
Perlman 2020). These power relationships, created by means of documentation, are
explained by Rizzo, stating that photographs can ‘be interpreted as documents, as
material products resulting from a social interaction, or as an encounter between
photographer and photographed at a particular moment in time. Yet, it is an asymme-
trical relationship, dictating the terms under which subjects get access to the means
and mode of production and objects are constituted within particular knowledge
regimes’(Rizzo 2005, 705–6). Nassar explains that ‘These relationships incorporate not
only aesthetic considerations but ideological ones as well. In this sense, the photograph
is a tool of power and authority by which both the photographer and the viewer
through their gaze conquer the world of the subject and assign meanings to it’
(Nassar 2006a, 318).
Figure 2 from The Library of Congress collection shows a Bedouin child in a stereo-
graph. The Bedouin child is standing near a camel, holding its rein. The child is photo-
graphed from a few metres away, so it is hard to discern his features or facial
language. There are large rocks in the image’s foreground, which create a visual
barrier. This barrier combines a visual and cultural separation between the child and
the viewer. His clothing is undiscernible, and he is barefoot. Photographing from afar
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST 5

objectifies the child by creating a visual distance that connotes belonging to a remote
culture.
However, it should be noted that the distance and separation from the child can also
be explained by technical factors. Cumbersome photographic equipment and technology
affected the spontaneity of the photographers. The heavy equipment of glass-plate
cameras used till the end of the nineteenth century prevented spontaneity, flexibility
with angles, and positioning of the cameras. This hindrance did not allow the photogra-
phers to skip over rocks or follow the children on the path as we would today with our
cameras and smartphones. A different approach by the photographer might have
included lowering the camera to the children’s eye level, capturing their smiles, group
playing, or being content with their families. Such an approach would humanize them
and generate a liking and empathy towards the children and their lifestyle. What the
viewer is left with is a rigid image with an archival caption stating merely ‘Bedouin boy
with camel’. The text indicates that the image is not of a boy, but a ‘boy and a camel’
referred to equally. To the Western eye, the visual connotation of the caption is that of
a child roaming barefoot in the desert, working at a young age.
Despite the uniqueness of each colonial region and country, the similarities in styles,
approaches, and genres of colonial photography of inhabitants culminated in photo-
graphs that ‘invaded European and American homes that contributed to the shaping in
the European mind of an image of Palestine’(Nassar 2006, 326). Azoulay describes this
as an imperial grammar of photographic archives and suggests non-imperial modes as
an alternative (Azoulay 2019, 19). Azoulay argues that colonial power and hegemony
both shape and are shaped by Western forms of knowledge. As a result, certain
Figure 2. Bedouin boy with camel, 1900–1920. Courtesy of The Library of Congress.
6E. BARROMI-PERLMAN AND R. KARK

representations of colonial subjects and the native population have served as a legal and
moral justification for European domination overseas (Azoulay 2019, 8). Behdad explains
that the camera, as a mechanical means of documentation, ‘ought to be viewed as an
actor that made significant contributions to the orientalist network (Behdad 2017, 373).
He adds that ‘The availability of photographic albums of Middle Eastern antiquity and
the Holy Land, the common display of photographs of the region in the world exhibitions,
and the reproduction of images by photographic studios provided many people with a
glimpse of “the Orient”’ (Behdad 2017, 373–374).
Characteristics of Bedouin Childhood
Due to photographic technology, the portraits of Bedouins by foreign photographers
from this era were black and white. Consequently, the technical limitations of the era pre-
vented the traditional rich Bedouin colours of embroidered clothing from being shown
nor appreciated. The pictures show that the children were not dressed up for the
occasion, groomed, cleaned, or combed. Actually, Bedouin culture did not develop chil-
dren’s clothes. In Arabia, for example, ‘[T]he costumes of children are similar to those
of adults in terms of the design, the fabric, the decorations and the colours’(Alajaji
2012, 517). The traditional children’s costumes in the Najd Bedouin settlements (Saudi
Arabia) are miniature adult costumes. The costumes of Bedouin children in Arab countries
are characterized by a lack of attention to decoration, due to economic and social factors
(Alajaji 2012, 516).
This description aligns with Bedouin norms of childcare in the period under investi-
gation. Ashkenazi’s research in 1938 showed that Bedouin boys were often semi-
dressed and barefoot until they reached puberty. At birth, a baby boy would be massaged
with female camel urine (a custom that later changed because of its shortage). In winter,
babies were not bathed; in summer, they were washed once a week or every other week,
and the head and hair were not cleaned before the baby was one year old (Ashkenazi
1938;1957). Thus, Western photographers encountered a culture with customs of
hygiene that involved children with dishevelled hair. These children might have been pri-
vileged members within their tribes but probably appeared filthy, vulnerable, and neg-
lected for Westerners viewing such photographs.
In general, in historical archival photographs, Bedouin children appear connected to
the adult world surrounding them –near their parents or attending to chores. Modern
nineteenth-century Western notions of childhood, in which children are protected, edu-
cated, and allowed time for play and recreation, were uncommon among the Bedouins.
Hence, their images do not conform to Western notions of childhood in which children
are seen playing games or holding toys. ‘Playing suggests having fun, messing around’
(Katsap and Silverman 2016, 38). Huss and Alhaiga-Taz (2012), who studied Bedouin
children’s experiences, advocate a holistic understanding of childhood. They explain
that ‘[C]hildren’s experience from a social and cultural perspective is understood as eco-
logically embedded within and shaped by specific physical and social contexts, in
addition to inherent character traits and direct family interactions’(Huss and Alhaiga-
Taz 2012, 1).
As in all pre-industrial societies, Bedouin children were socialized to perform specific
gender roles of labour from the young age of four or five. Fernea writes that among
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST 7

the Bedouins, ‘[C]hildhood was not seen as a specific bounded time period, and adoles-
cence, as perceived in modern western thought, scarcely existed. One moved from baby-
hood through childhood to puberty and adulthood’(Fernea 1995, 10). She adds that
‘there is little evidence of carefree childhood or indeed childhood as an important
stage in itself …the period of childhood is a nuisance, and childhood activities, especially
play, are a waste of time’(Fernea 1995, 10). Katsap and Silverman (2016) describe how
nowadays Bedouin children’s games are attuned to sand and specific desert conditions,
such as playing with pebbles and stones. Games can include physical skills, as in
combat or hunting. But we have not found photographs of leisure, games, or play of
Bedouin children from that period. It stands to reason that a photographer at the time
would not find an allotted physical space or place for children, such as an outdoor play-
ground. The children’s place in a physical and visual sense is absent. None of the archival
photographs indicate childhood other than proximity to the mothers.
The physical distance of the children from the photographers in the pictures was poss-
ibly a result of cultural superstitions; Bedouin boys are taught to keep a distance from
strangers. According to Abu-Rabia, the Bedouins believe that baby boys are more suscep-
tible to the evil eye than girls. The newborn baby is thought to be vulnerable (najmih
khafif, hassas) to the gaze of a stranger or even a strange look by someone familiar to
the family that may cause harm and bad luck (Abu-Rabia 2005, 248). Belief and supersti-
tion play a significant role in Bedouin culture, and fear of the evil eye ‘is tied to the fear of
envy and jealousy in the eye of the beholder. It is said to be conveyed by a strange gaze’
(Abu-Rabia 2005, 241). He adds that the power of the evil eye is so strong that ‘a covetous
look towards the baby can potentially jeopardize the child’s well-being. It is also believed
that undesirable traits can be transferred to the baby through an alien gaze, touch, or kiss
(2005, 248).
Irrespective of the children’s recoil from foreigners, notions of childhood are reflected
not only by what is present but also what is absent in the images, such as signs of
affection, smiles, laughter, frolicking, or being children rather than miniature adults.
This created a void in the presentation of Bedouin childhood, caused by the absence of
a comprehensive reflection of Bedouin society’s fabric.
Le Febvre (2015) explains another aspect of understanding the fabric of the Negev
Bedouin society, that relates to their local historicity which derives from the division of
tribes, status, and lineage. It is an internal cultural perception that can only be understood
from within, by the members of the Bedouin society; only they are familiar with their
rituals, principles, customs, and performances. This is another example of how the
western visual style of documentation of Bedouin culture was not involved in reflecting
the society from within, but rather objectified the people and particularly the children
in this case, by not engaging with the children’s tribal status or lineage and by omitting
information and data in the archival records, limiting the description to ‘boy’or ‘child’.
Mothers and Children in Photographs
Bedouin culture is a patrilineal, male-oriented system (Abu-Lughod 1999). Tribal seg-
ments can only grow through the addition of males, and power is measured by their
number (Abu-Lughod 1999, 122). Marx explains that Bedouins tribes are ‘firmly organized
in relatively small corporate groups of men, whose members are recruited by patrilineal
8E. BARROMI-PERLMAN AND R. KARK

descent’(Marx 1973, 413). The marginalization of women in Bedouin society conflated the
superstitions mentioned above. Fischel and Kark explain that ‘Bedouin women avoided
meeting and speaking with men, in particular strange men. Furthermore, they did not
walk alone along the roads’(Fischel and Kark 2012, 84). This resulted in photographs of
Bedouin women hidden behind clothing and ornaments, often in passing near a well
or working in a field:
Bedouin women carried a large burden of the herding, watering, and feeding of camels,
goats, and sheep raised by their tribes. They also maintained the upkeep of their tents or
shacks and made cheese and other goods to sell for cash needed by their clans (Fischel
and Kark 2012, 83).
In this patriarchal culture, women were expected to be ‘invisible’and hide their faces
when encountering strangers and photographers. The primary source of female inferiority
lies in the association of femininity with reproduction. The women are considered tainted
by menstruation and sexuality; their path to gain respectability is by having sons and
being modest. As raising the young children is their responsibility, they appear together
in the documentation. ‘Mothers and daughters are close and interdependent’, according
to Abu-Lughod (1999, 122). They spend a great deal of time together while daughters
help their mothers with chores and work. Therefore, we expected to see that a child
photographed in proximity to a mother would be a daughter. Yet, there seemed to be
no clear visual distinction between male and female infants in the photographs.
Figure 3. Bedouin woman, with her children, 1938, Southern Palestine, standing before their tent.
Courtesy of The Library of Congress.
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST 9

In Figures 3 and 4, the formal construction and visual codes of presentation are similar,
though they were taken forty years apart. In Figure 3, we see the mother standing in front
of a tent, holding a baby in her arms and touching the older child’s head lightly with her
other hand. The mother’s face is covered and turned sideways. The head is not only
inclined but also turned away from the photographer.
In Figure 4, the mothers are holding their children and each child is seated on the
mother’s left shoulder. They are posed in front of a tent. It is not clear if the subject
matter is the mothers, the children, or an image of both. The women are looking back at
the photographer but not communicating with him. It does appear that the women
could influence the final product despite being its subject. The tent in the background
shows that the photograph was taken close to home. The colour photograph of Figure 4
made the pictures more appealing to the viewers and promoted its sale as a postcard, por-
traying an exotic culture. In both images, the mothers appear protective of their babies,
shielding and protectively holding them. Furthermore, in observing these pictures there
appear similarities; the mothers are barefoot, wearing amulets, and so are the children.
As in most of the archival photographs of the Bedouin people, in this case, too, there is
a lack of information about the names of the women, their tribe, status (wives or slaves),
location, and precise date. The information is limited to ‘mother, children, and tents’.It
should be noted that missionaries or tourists often took these kinds of photographs in
the Holy Land. They were not part of ethnographic or scientific expeditions or had
Figure 4. Bedouin women and children, 1890–1900. Holy Land. Creative Commons https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bedouins_and_children_outside_tent,_Holy_Land-LCCN2002725066.jpg.
10 E. BARROMI-PERLMAN AND R. KARK

scholarly purposes though some wrote journals or published articles (Behdad 2017).Thus,
their pictures differ from the photographs of archeological sites taken by scientists on
surveys expedition or excavations. Scientific research expeditions and surveys of Pales-
tine, such as those undertaken by the Palestine Exploration Fund (founded in 1865),
were driven by imperialist aspirations and religious or scientific motivations. They were
nurtured by entitlement that feeds into the ‘cosmopolitan imaginaries that were at
play in the British Empire’(Vokes 2010, 378).
The phenomenon of tourist travellers explains the lack of ethnographic, historical, geo-
graphic, or cultural data in the case of Bedouin children, such as those found in Edwards’
Anthropology and Photography (1992). Scientific anthropology was harnessed for colonial
domination all over the British Empire, mainly by the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Enjoying the expansion of the ‘power of knowing’, colonial domination was transformed
into a rationalized, observed ‘truth’(Edwards 1992, 6). Ultimately, the unprofessional and
biased lack of attention to detail, as in the writing of ‘Bedouin’or ‘camel’alone, erases the
people’s individuality and features. The lack of information limits the possibilities of the
photograph to portray a so-called ‘truth’or to serve as fact-gathering classificatory evi-
dence, mainly because the textual data necessary for proof does not exist. Furthermore,
we have found a consistent similarity in the form of presentation of the Bedouin children
in this timeline, even though the photographs were taken fifty years apart. Hence, we are
convinced that the images of Bedouin children by foreign photographers in Palestine,
from before the direct British Mandate, carry similar traits, which are based on Western
colonial notions towards children.
Photographs of Bedouin Families in a Comparative Perspective
Figures 5 presents a Bedouin family, found in the Keystone View Company archive,
which historically purchased negatives for their archives. It appears in the library of
congress archive under subject categorization of ‘Children, Dwellings, Families’. The
letter P indicates that the image is classified as part of an educational series of the
Figure 5. Tent home of the Bedouins. Palestine [ca. 1879–1930] (front) Creative Commons https://
www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:02871 × 12g.
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST 11

company’s education department, intended for elementary school children. The children
are seated on the ground in the image while the man is standing in the background,
shielding a woman behind him. Another woman is sitting holding a child in the back-
ground. Seven children appear in this stereograph. They take up a small section of the
frame because of their height. While the two wives are hidden in the background, the
man is tall, holding a cane stretching out his hand. The children are barefoot, wearing tat-
tered clothes, and seated on the ground, ignoring the photographer.
The standing adults and seated children, the children’s lack of a returned gaze, and their
overall appearance make them appear of lesser significance. The children are not the focus
of the image. They appear in a context referred to in the caption: ‘Tent home of the Bed-
ouins’. This photograph, in which the parents stand and the children are exposed at the
forefront of the frame, is labelled, ‘A Bedouin family portrait’. The text does not specify
the family’s tribe or the number of men and women, children, or gender. The generic
term ‘Bedouins’extends the visual social distancing into a literal one since the categoriz-
ation mechanism objectifies them. This image-making is not intended to reflect the fabric
of this Bedouin family –their nomadic culture and forms of parenting in a culture geared
toward preserving traditional familial values (Abu-Lughod 1999).
Palestine’s Bedouin culture and lifestyle were rooted in the region’s nomadic history.
Their history counts back to waves of immigration to southern Palestine from Arabia,
Transjordan, the Sinai Peninsula, and Egypt for 200 years. The nomadic economy was
based on grazing sheep, goats, and camels. In the Ottoman period, the Bedouin retained
their nomadic lifestyle, moving their mobile tents to different locations during the
seasons (Bailey 1980). Goering (1979) wrote that the life of the Negev Bedouin remained
unaltered in a ‘world without time’although a few tribes shifted to semi-nomadic life after
the end of the Ottoman period in Palestine in 1918; a century and a half ago, censuses
were uncommon. ‘[B]y the end of the British Mandate, there were seven Bedouin tribes
that included some 95 sub-tribes. Their population size was estimated at between
73,000 (1922) and 49,000 (1945)’(Kark and Frantzman 2012, 77). It is difficult to determine
the total population of Bedouins at the time of the pictures researched; most were
Figure 6. Tent home of the Bedouins. Palestine [ca. 1879–1930] (back) Creative Commons https://
www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:02871 × 12g.
12 E. BARROMI-PERLMAN AND R. KARK

nomads, and some were semi-nomadic, affecting the differing census counts. As
amplified in Figure 6, the Bedouin appeared in records only as ‘Others’in some cases,
and in general, classified as nomadic. Figure 6 is the reverse of the stereograph of
Figure 5 and includes the following statements: ‘Perhaps you think camping is fun. You
take much fresh and canned food with you. Arab’s food is not like yours. But if you eat
it with him, he will become your friend. ..’. This caption delineates the ‘other.’You and
Us. We, Westerns, like camping with canned foods. They are not like you; their food is
different. But it is easy to befriend ‘them’by partaking of ‘their’food. This description
of the Bedouin’s foreign culture oversimplifies the social differences and the way of life
of the people in the image which, in this case, was done as part of an educational kit.
It may be argued that this is a ‘thick description’–giving meaning to the image in
simple terms for the children’s understanding through an interpretation of the culture
(Geertz 1973). This derives from the understanding that thick descriptions are designed
to make cultural outsiders understand social actions and pay attention to everyday arbi-
trary events that can convey important social notions and are intended for broad audi-
ences of readers (Ponterotto 2006). Geertz argues that ‘The notion that one can find
the essence of national societies, civilizations, great religions, or whatever summed up
in so-called “typical”small towns and villages is palpable nonsense. What one finds in
small towns and villages is (alas) small-town and village life’(Geertz 1973, 319). The
caption of Figure 6 represents a misconception that by acquiring so-called knowledge
of other cultures’small towns, the cultural differences between different worlds can be
transcended. Instead of acknowledging the world’s colonial order from which the
images stem, similarities between the Western and Bedouin cultures are assumed, prom-
ising that they will ‘become your friend’by eating their food.
The same conceptions underlay the American National Geographic magazine, which
although not European, carries a similar attitude of Western entitlement. It is rich with
feature stories and photographs of remote cultures and peoples but has developed
superficial knowledge among its readers (Neuhaus 1997). Neuhaus argues that the
‘Other’is secured a smooth place in the American melting pot by equating seeing with
understanding in this magazine. This conception is part of ‘tourist stance behind a
camera’culture (Neuhaus 1997, 21) that implies ‘that there was never much difference
in the first place’(Neuhaus 1997, 7). This approach paved a particular path for citizens’
journey in the hegemonic world. Similarly, the sentence, ‘perhaps you think camping is
fun’(in Figure 6 above) was probably written to create a common ground of pleasure.
Yet, at the same time, other sentences express the hegemonic position by reminding
the readers that they would not like goat meat and that the oven’s shape is ‘queer’,as
appears in the original text.
European Bourgeoisie
The cultural gap between the Bedouins and the Western bourgeoisie could not have been
wider. In nineteenth-century Western societies, the children of the wealthy were photo-
graphed as individuals, particularly if they were perceived as future heirs, carriers of the
family name, or expected to inherit a title. Unlike the documentation of the Bedouins
by tourist photographers, the British Victorian style of children’s portraits that influenced
the entirety of Europe, involved commissioned photographs that entailed portraiture
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST 13

codes and aesthetics of photographic studios. It also became more common to integrate
children in family portraits. Figure 7 shows a family portrait in which five siblings are
photographed with their mother. The youngest child in this photograph is seated on a
high stool to prevent stark differences in height. Each sibling is dressed in their attire,
and the body language of each is distinct. The photographer stages the photograph.
The governing principle of such a family portrait is to allow each member a distinctive
appearance and show that the family is bonded while also enabling their own space.
They are all gazing intently at the camera, indicating that the staged family portrait
was planned and controlled.
The Extension of Orientalism: Dressing up as Bedouins in Palestine
Orientalist portraiture clichés influenced Western styles of children’s portraiture. They
emerged in the nineteenth century, involving stereotypes and tropes of Middle Eastern
populations. The use of costume in photographic portraiture in that period presented a
form of modernity, a fluidity of identities, and an indicator of the social status of the
sitter. People were dressed up in costumes selected by photographers for photographing
in their studios. Costumes presented foreign cultures that were exotic and erotic.
Woodward (2009) describes how orientalist photography recycles familiar stereotypes
and clichés. The stereotypes create fictional worlds that assure audiences of their super-
iority. Hannoosh explains that ‘the use of costume allowed for a “trying on”of different
identities during a period of dramatic transformation in Ottoman dress and social prac-
tices, identities which could change as easily as the sitter’s clothes’(Hannoosh 2016,
Figure 7. Family portrait, Rome 1899. Courtesy of Author.
14 E. BARROMI-PERLMAN AND R. KARK

16). It was common to dress up as Turks, Greeks, Arabs, and Bedouins. The garb worn by
sitters in professional studios had the same function as the props and the background.
The photographers created an illusion of a tangible connection with distant lands and
remote peoples for the sitters.
Orientalism in studio-portraiture of children was adopted by Jewish immigrants from
Eastern Europe to Palestine during the early twentieth century. The photographer
Avraham Soskin, who immigrated to Palestine from Russia in 1904, provides an
example. Soskin’s studio was located in Tel Aviv (founded in 1909), the most modern
Jewish city in pre-State Israel. Composed of a diverse, mainly immigrant population, Tel
Aviv developed an urban culture. Soskin’s portraits visualized the Orientalist yearning
of the Jewish pioneers in Palestine to be absorbed into a form of Middle Eastern
‘Arabism’. Sela writes about the trend of ‘staging “exotic”’ studio portraits of Westerners
or local Jews dressed up in Palestinian clothing with Oriental-looking objects in the back-
ground; scenes which catered to Eurocentric fantasies of an enchanted Orient’(Sela 2021,
204). Orientalism presented a patronizing Western world attitude towards the Arab
people in Palestine, which the local Zionists adopted. According to Guez, the Zionists
in Palestine imagined the Levant as a possible future identity for the Zionist project
(Guez 2015, 132). In the studio portraits that Soskin created, the sitters often wore Arab
and Bedouin garbs such as kufiyahs, abayas, and more.
In Soskin’s studio, children could choose costumes or various garbs and props, as shown
in Figure 8. The boy is in full dress with every detail thought out: the hands holding the
knife, the angle of the portrait, and the length of the body in the frame. Hannoosh
writes that such photographs contained a ‘mixed character, bringing together photogra-
phers of diverse origin practicing in different places, photographs produced in one place
and made available in others, mass-produced images sold across the region’(Hannoosh
2016, 27). Soskin photographed local Jewish European immigrants in oriental attire, inte-
grating diverse origins, practices, and places in his photographs. This practice aligned
with the Zionist attempts to ‘to pose with those Arab accessories …designed to embody
the success of the Zionist project in transforming children who were exilic Jewish victims
to natives who have become part of the local landscape’(Zerubavel, 2008, 315). As part
of the attempt to create a new prototype of Zionist Jewish children in their promised
land, a new hybrid visual construct, the ‘Hebrew Bedouin’, was created (Zerubavel, 2008,
316). In the eyes of those Zionists, who portrayed themselves as courageous Bedouin war-
riors, the Bedouin culture and lifestyle presented a ‘symbolic link to the ancient Hebrew’and
the biblical past (Zerubavel, 2008, 319). The kufiya and abaya,themen’sheaddressand
cloak, resembled portrayals of ancient Hebrews, displaying a local identity. Soskin’sphoto-
graph of a Jewish boy dressed up as a Bedouin adult male (Figure 8)epitomizesthisidea.
Nassar explains that this practice of orientalist photography also applied to non-
Bedouin Arabs in Palestine, beginning with Christian Arab families and later extending
to Muslim families. Interestingly, within the local Arab culture, the Bedouins were con-
sidered exotic and different but situated at the bottom of the social scale amongst
local Muslim and Christian Palestinians. The Bedouins are a distinct group within the
Arab population, being nomads and semi-nomads and because of their kinship networks,
social structure, language, culture, history, lifestyle, heritage, and Sunni Islam. According
to Nassar: ‘It appears that the newly emerging class of urban aristocracy had fully adopted
European attire and lifestyle and, along with it, the perception of peasants and Bedouins
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST 15

as exotic Orientals’(Nassar 2006b, 147). Photographs by the Armenian and Arab photo-
graphers Krikorian and Khalil Ra’ad in the 1920s in their Jerusalem studios portray Arab
women dressed as Bedouins. The photographers ‘had a number of costumes at the dis-
posal of their customers who could choose to be photographed in the guise of other
“more exotic”locals’(Nassar 2006b, 147).
However, the Bedouin themselves were not a subject of portrayal for the local Arab
photographers. There were also no known Bedouin photographers and publications of
Bedouin tribes’pictures by either Bedouin or Palestinian photographers in Palestine at
the time. Unsurprisingly, no photographs of or by Bedouins were included in Walid Khalidi’s
book, Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876–1948 (Khalidi
2010). In the book, the Jerusalem-born historian Khalidi compiled photographs by Palesti-
nian photographers which portray Palestine as a thriving country culturally and economi-
cally, thus undermining the conventional stereotype of the Palestinians’backwardness.
Figure 8. Photograph of a boy by Avraham Soskin, 1922. Courtesy of Piki Wiki. https://www.pikiwiki.
org.il/gallery/?s=%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%9F&page = 2.
16 E. BARROMI-PERLMAN AND R. KARK

Portraits of Bedouins were not captured by local Jewish institutions either. Jewish
photographers were hired by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to photograph Jewish pio-
neers’Zionist endeavour of land settlement on Kibbutzim for fund-raising and land acqui-
sition. The JNF archive contains photographs of Bedouins from 1901-2013, but less than
fifty are dated before the establishment of Israel in 1948. Additionally, most were not
taken by Jewish photographers and are available in other archives. Five of those photo-
graphs show children, of which two are girls’portraits. Most of the photographs of groups
of Bedouin children in the JNF archive are from Bedouin schools from 2005 onwards. The
style of photography in all of them is consistent with the findings of this research.
Private Photographs from a Family Album of Jewish Children Dressed as
Bedouins
Figures 9 present personal family photographs of Dr. Yehudah Ben Assa’s children. Ben
Assa was a Jewish physician who treated the Bedouin population of the Northern
Negev in Israeli governmental clinics from 1953 to 1966 (Barromi-Perlman and Kark
2019). In these photographs, his children are dressed as Bedouins on the Jewish
holiday of Purim, when Jewish children traditionally dress up in costumes and are photo-
graphed. Dr. Ben Assa befriended the Bedouins and was known among them as ‘Abu
Assa’(the father of Assa); he spoke their language, and along with his children and
family, was hosted by them. As an amateur photographer, Ben Assa’s photographs
were a private collection, not exposed to the public eye and mainly intended for
medical records and private family albums. Although those children’s photographs
dressed up in original Bedouin clothes follow the principles and style of Soskin, they
create a cultural distinction between being Jewish and the reality of the Bedouin children.
Unlike Soskin’s studio portraits, Ben Assa’s photographs do not present a condescending
eye on Bedouin apparel or Bedouin culture.
However, the clothes in Ben Assa’s photographs are not devoid of Israeli Orientalism, as
described by Guez (2015). The backdrop of the photograph is Ben Assa’s house in a modest
middle-class neighbourhood of the family residence in Beer Sheba and the Negev desert.
This residence signifies the Jewish settlement that introduced modernity and urbanism to
the desert. The set of photographs demonstrates the extension of Bedouin culture into
Israeli culture in the early years of the state, but with cultural distancing and lack of
Figure 9. Photographs of Ben Assa’s children dressed up as Bedouin on the Jewish holiday of Purim.
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST 17

integration. Bedouins continued to be someone ‘you dress up as’. The fashion has since
diminished as tensions between the Bedouin and the Israeli state have increased.
Conclusion
This research on the photography of Bedouin children in Palestine surveyed historical
archives from over a hundred years ago, creating a database of a total of about 100 pic-
tures. When we set out to explore this topic, we were expecting to find different forms of
documentation, which would reap several categories of style and structure of photogra-
phy. However, contrary to our expectations, we found consistency in style in all our data.
Other than a handful of close-up portraits that proved insignificant, the entire body of
work of photography on this subject had the same structure. Therefore, the focus of
this study shifted to an attempt to shed light on this disturbing phenomenon and
explain it from various angles.
The principal finding of the research is that Bedouin children and their families in Pales-
tine’s desert in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were photographed by
Western photographers as ‘others’in a consistent style, form and structure. The analysis
of archival photographs uncovers the visual mechanisms that constructed the ‘otherness’
of the children. The documentation that was part of the imperial social order involved
visual distancing from the children and physical nonintervention by the photographers.
As shown in this study, the outlook, gaze, and perspective of photography at the time
developed into a trope and style that visually subjugated the Bedouin children in the
viewers’eyes. The distancing prevented viewers from interacting closely with what
they were looking at and consequently developing little understanding of the children’s
society and their childhood in that society.
The Bedouin population could not engage in image-making, and no published com-
mercial studio photographs were commissioned by the tribes’chiefs at the time. But
even the processes of change surrounding them (modernization under the British
Mandate, influx of European travellers and Jewish pioneers, and a growing Palestinian
population) did not push the Bedouin society towards image-making. The Bedouins
lacked the agency to construct their own photographic documentation. They were
subject to foreign photographers’style and genres with no control over the process,
their presentation, and the viewing by the public.
The asymmetrical relationship resulted from a hierarchy in which Bedouin children
were the not only subordinate subjects in foreign documentation but also within their
own culture. Furthermore, images of children can be associated with notions of vulner-
ability and dependency. Viewing images of a foreign culture that ostensibly neglects its
children because they appear filthy and barefoot contributes to a visual disempowerment
of this group. Regardless of how the Bedouin society perceives childcare, parenting, child-
rearing, and childhood, the intentional presentation of visual signs of neglect connotes
subordination of these children. The original categorization system with captions and
titles of ‘Boy with Camel’, which is still online and in digital archives, perpetuates the
same notions of otherness and a sense of superiority towards Bedouin children. The
danger lies in the comfort zones of the modern-day viewers; what we see, wish to see,
and how we see it derives from our culture and conventions. Our viewing needs to be
challenged to promote awareness and change.
18 E. BARROMI-PERLMAN AND R. KARK

Note
1. We explored archives of public and private collections. The public archives we consulted
include the 1893 photographic albums of the Ottoman Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, the Israeli Gov-
ernment Picture collection, the archives of the University of Haifa, Piki wiki, the California
Museum of Photography, UC Riverside, the PEF online archive and Flickr photographs, the
Magnum archive, and the American Colony Archive and The Matson collection in the U.S.
Library of Congress. The private collections we used are The Ken Jacobsen Orientalist pho-
tography collection, and the private archive of Dr. Yehuda Ben Assa. We also consulted the
personal collection of John D. Whiting of the American Colony in Jerusalem, who photo-
graphed people, locations, and events in the Middle East from 1890–1954. Whiting created
Diaries in Photos (1934–1939). Additionally, we surveyed books and academic publications.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on Contributors
Edna Barromi-Perlman is a research fellow of the Institute for Research of the Kibbutz and the coop-
erative idea in the University of Haifa, and an Honorary Research Associate of The Hadassah-Bran-
deis Institute, at Brandeis University. USA. Her research focuses on archival photographs in Palestine
and Israel, personal historical albums and analysis of gender and photography in Judaism. Her work
appears in academic journals such as Social Semiotics,Journal of Israeli History,Journal of Visual Lit-
eracy,Journal of Landscape Research, Journal of Media and Religion,Photography and Culture,Journal
of Landscape Ecology,International Journal of Qualitative Methods. She received her PhD at the Uni-
versity of Sussex, and her MFA in Goldsmiths College in the UK. Her book Photographs of Childhood
and Parenting on Kibbutz: Collective Memories and Private Memorials was published in 2020. Edna is a
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Visual Literacy in Kibbutz College of Education in Israel.
Ruth Kark, Professor Emerita at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has written and edited 27 books
and 200 articles on the history and historical geography of Palestine/Israel. Her research interests
include among other topics, land and settlement activity, policy and law, Western civilizations
and the Holy Land (consuls, churches, missionaries, modern technology), women and gender,
museology and ethnographic museums, as well as the Bedouin in the Middle East.
ORCID
Edna Barromi-Perlman http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6405-8525
References
Abu-Lughod, L. 1999.Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Abu-Rabia, A. 2005.“The Evil Eye and Cultural Beliefs among the Bedouin Tribes of the Negev,
Middle East.”Folklore 116: 241–254.
Alajaji, T. N. 2012.“Children’s Traditional Costumes in Najd Bedouin Settlement Areas in the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”Academic Research International 3 (2): 516–529.
Ashkenazi, T. 1938.Tribus Semi-Nomades de la Palestine du Nord. Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul
Geuthner.
Ashkenazi, T. 1957.The Bedouins: Manners and Customs [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass.
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST 19

Assi, S. 2018.The History and Politics of the Bedouin: Reimagining Nomadism in Modern Palestine.
London: Routledge.
Azoulay, A. 2019.Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London: Verso.
Bailey, C. 1980.“Dating the Arrival of the Bedouin Tribes in Sinai and the Negev.”Journal of the
Economic and Social History of the Orient 28 (1980): 20–49.
Bar, D., and K. Cohen-Hattab. 2003.“A New Kind of Pilgrimage: The Modern Tourist Pilgrim
of Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Palestine.”Middle Eastern Studies 39 (2):
131–148.
Barromi-Perlman, E. 2011.“The Role of an Archivist in Shaping Collective Memory on Kibbutz
Through her Work on the Photographic Archive.”Journal of Visual Literacy 30 (1): 1–18.
Barromi-Perlman, E. 2020.“Visions of Landscape Photography in Palestine and Israel.”Landscape
Research 45 (5): 564–582. doi:10.1080/01426397.2019.1704230.
Barromi-Perlman, E., and R. Kark. 2019.“The Visibility of Bedouin Women in the Negev as Reflected
in the Private Photographic Collection of Dr. Ben Assa.”Photography and Culture 12 (1): 25–46.
doi:10.1080/17514517.2018.1551654.
Barromi Perlman, E. 2017.“Archeology, Zionism and Photography in Palestine: Analysis of the Use of
Dimensions of People in Photographs.”Journal of Landscape Ecology 10 (3): 49–57.
Behdad, A. 2017.“Mediated Visions: Early Photography of the Middle East and Orientalist Network.”
History of Photography 41 (4): 362–375. doi:10.1080/03087298.2017.1342370.
Edwards, E. 1992.Anthropology& Photography, 1860-1920. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press.
Fernea, E. W. ed 1995.Children in the Muslim Middle East. 2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas.
Fischel, R., and R. Kark. 2012.“Palestinian Women in the Public Domain During the Late Ottoman
and Mandate Periods, 1831–1948.”Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World
10: 77–96.
Geertz, C. 1973.Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture. The Interpretation of
Cultures, (vo. 5019). New York: Basic Books: 3-31.
Goering, K. 1979.“Israel and the Bedouin of the Negev.”Journal of Palestine Studies 9 (1): 3–20.
doi:10.1525/jps.1979.9.1.00p0173n.
Graham-Brown, S. 1988.Images of Women. New York: Columbia University Press.
Guez, D. 2015.Pre- Israeli Orientalism. A Photographic Portrait. Tel Aviv: Ressling.
Hannavy, J. 2008.Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. London: Routledge.
Hannoosh, M. 2016.“Practices of Photography: Circulation and Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century
Mediterranean.”History of Photography 40 (1): 3–27. doi:10.1080/03087298.2015.1123830.
Huss, E., and S. Alhaiga-Taz. 2012.“Bedouin Children’s Experience of Growing up in Illegal Villages,
Versus in Townships in Israel: Implications of Social Context for Understanding Stress, and
Resilience in Children’s Drawings.”International Journal of Art Therapy (Formerly Inscape) 18 (1):
10–19. doi:10.1080/17454832.2012.747217.
Kark, R. 2020.“Geopietism and Pilgrimage/Tourism to the Holy Land/Palestine (1850–1918) and the
Case of Thomas Cook.”In Nineteenth-Century European Pilgrimages: A New Golden Age, edited by
Antón M. Pazos, 65–81. London: Routledge.
Kark, R., and S. J. Frantzman. 2012.“The Negev: Land, Settlement, the Bedouin and Ottoman and
British Policy 1871–1948.”British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39 (1): 53–77.
Katsap, A., and F. L. Silverman. 2016.Ethnomathematics of Negev Bedouins’Existence in Forms,
Symbols and Geometric Patterns. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Khalidi, W. 2010.Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876–1948.
Washington, D.C: Institute of Palestine Studies.
Ledin, P., and D. Machin. 2018.Doing Visual Analysis: From Theory to Practice. London: Sage publications.
Le Febvre, E. M. 2015.“Contentious Realities: Politics of Creating an Image Archive with the Negev
Bedouin in Southern Israel.”History and Anthropology 26 (4): 480–503. doi:10.1080/02757206.
2015.1074900.
Marx, E. 1973.“Circumcision Feasts among the Negev Bedouins.”International Journal of Middle East
Studies 4 (4): 411–427.
20 E. BARROMI-PERLMAN AND R. KARK

Nassar, I. 2006a.“Biblification’in the Service of Colonialism.”Third Text 20 (3–4): 317–326. doi:10.
1080/09528820600853589.
Nassar, I. 2006b.“Familial Snapshots: Representing Palestine in the Work of the First Local
Photographers.”History and Memory 18 (2): 139–155.
Neuhaus, J. 1997.“Colonizing The Coffee Table: “national Geographic”Magazine and Erasure of
Difference in the Representation of Women.”American Periodicals 7: 1–26. http://www.jstor.
org/stable/20771100.
Ponterotto, J. G. 2006.“Brief Note on the Origins, Evolution, and Meaning of the Qualitative Research
Concept Thick Description.”The Qualitative Report 11 (3): 538–549.
Pultz, J. 1995.On Nineteenth-Century Realism and Social Control. The Body and the Lens. Photography
1839 to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc.
Rizzo, L. 2005.“A Glance Into the Camera: Gendered Visions of Historical Photographs in Kaoko
(North-Western Namibia).”Gender & History 17 (3): 682–713.
Said, E. 1993.Culture and Imperialism. New York: First Vintage Books Edition.
Sela, R. 2007.“Crossed Histories.”In Crossed Histories: Imagined Reality, edited by R. Sela, 110–194.
Haifa: Haifa City Museum Press.
Sela, R. 2014.“Rethinking National Archives in Colonial Countries and Zones of Conflict. The Israeli-
Palestinian Conflict and Israel’s National Photography Archives as a Case Study”.Ibraaz,
Contemporary Visual Culture In North Africa and the Middle East. P, 1-18. http://www.ibraaz.org/
essays/83.
Sela, R. 2021.“Resilient Resistance: Colonial Biblical, Archaeological and Ethnographical Imaginaries
in the Work of Chalil Raad (KhalīlRaʿd), 1891–1948.”In Imaging and Imagining Palestine,
Photography, Modernity, and the Biblical Lens, 1918–1948, edited by K. S. Summerer, and S.
Zananiri, 185–226. Leiden: Brill Publishers (3).
Sheehi, S. 2016.The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, 1860–1910. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Vokes, R. 2010.“Reflections on a Complex (and Cosmopolitan) Archive: Postcards and Photography
in Early Colonial Uganda, c.1904–1928.”History and Anthropology 21 (4): 375–409. doi:10.1080/
02757206.2010.520888.
Waites, I. 2018.“One Big Playground for Kids’: A Contextual Appraisal of Some 1970s Photographs of
Children Hanging Out on a Post-Second-World-War British Council Estate.”Childhood in the Past
11 (2): 114–128.
Woodward, M. L. 2009.“Creating Memory and History.”Photographies 2 (1): 21–35.
Zerubavel, Y. 2008.“Memory, the Rebirth of the Native, and the “Hebrew Bedouin”Identity.”Social
Research. Spring, 75 (1): 315-352.
CHILDHOOD IN THE PAST 21