Sary Zananiri is a Senior Lecturer at Monash Art, Design and Architecture. Zananiri co-edited Imaging and Imagining Palestine: Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens 1918-48 (2021), European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine: Between Contention and Connection (2021), Palestine in Transition: Frank Scholten’s Visual Archive of the British Mandate (2025) and has produced exhibitions in Europe, the Arab World and Australia.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsNotes on IllustrationsNotes on TransliterationIntroductionChapter 1: Situating Frank ScholtenThe Frank Scholten CollectionScholten’s Outputs: From ‘Palestine in Transition’ to Palestine IllustratedScholten Prior to PalestineImpacts on the Genesis of Scholten’s ProjectChapter 2: On Reading the ‘Holy Land’The Modern ‘Holy Land’‘Rebuilding’ JerusalemHeritagization and the Modern Remaking of the Ancient ‘Holy Land’Interpreting the ‘Holy Land’ConclusionChapter 3: On Reading Through Scholten as MethodologyThe Band Played ‘God Save the King’Reinventing Ritual and Reading the Changing NationReading Queer Milieus Across ContinentsConclusionChapter 4: On Reading Social PerformanceThe ‘Holy Peasant’: Fellahin and the Biblical LensIdentity Troubles: Performing Biblical IndigeneityDressed to Impress: Performing indigeneity?The Lord Be Between Thee and Me: Queer Biblical Visions and the FellahinConclusionChapter 5: On Reading MasculinityBiblical Labour, Desire and Simon the TannerA Brotherhood of Man: Queering the Military through DavidJewish Labour and Building the NationConclusionConclusion: Redefining the Biblical in a Modern World

Scholten must trembling in his grave, not out of indignation, but from exuberance and excitement over this critical and astute recognition of the grandeur of his unfinished work—just over a hundred years since he and his cameras set foot into Palestine just after the end of the Ottoman era and WWI. This book is bound to become the definitive study of Scholten and his world.