Group of young Bedouin women tent-dwellers in Moab of the Adwan tribe

The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection is a source of historical images of the Middle East. The majority of the images depict Palestine (present-day Israel and the West Bank) from 1898 to 1946. Most of the Library of Congress collection consists of over 23,000 glass and film photographic negatives and transparencies created by the American Colony Photo Department and its successor firm, the Matson Photo Service. The American Colony Photo Department in Jerusalem was one of several photo services operating in the Middle East before 1900. Catering primarily to the tourist trade, the American Colony and its competitors photographed holy sites, often including costumed actors recreating Biblical scenes. The firm’s photographers were residents of Palestine with knowledge of the land and people that gave them an advantage and made their coverage intimate and comprehensive. They documented Middle East culture, history, and political events from before World War I through the collapse of Ottoman rule, the British Mandate period, World War II, and the emergence of the State of Israel. The Matson Collection also includes images of people and locations in present-day Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey. Additionally, the firm produced photographs from an East African trip. The collection came to the Library of Congress between 1966 and 1981, through a series of gifts made by Eric Matson and his beneficiary, the Home for the Aged of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese of Los Angeles (now called the Kensington Episcopal Home).

A semi-nomadic group of tribes, the oldest desert people of the Arabian Peninsula. Known for their ingenuity and hospitality, the Bedouin have adapted to living in a harsh climate. Their tribes moved constantly from place to place, travelling thousands of miles across the sand dunes. They used the sun to determine east and west, and the stars to determine north and south. They also used the shape of the dunes as a guide to the direction of the prevailing winds. The Bedouins were excellent trackers and could not only tell the difference between human and animal tracks in the sand, but also whether they belonged to a man, a boy, a woman or a girl.