European artists , photographers and scholars who arrived to the “ Near East ” in the early 19 th century were driven larges by theological - Christian motivations , aiming to find there the cradle of Christianity ) or Holy Land ( , and by scientifi c - ethnographic goals , aiming to document and investigate “ the Orient . ” Their studies and their visual findings , first through the medium of painting and then through photography , refl ected the ways in which the West saw the East - a cultural - historical trend that Edward Said redefi ned , in its modern context , as “ Orientalism . ” As the present article will discuss , the term “ Orientalism ” is apt also for the perspective of the Zionist movement and the photographic representations of Jerusalem that it produced , albeit in terms not entirely identical to the meanings attached to the approach of the European West toward the East . Modern Jewish nationalism and the contemporary needs of the Zionist movement helped shape the pers...
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