Bethlehem Women

This collection is made up of digitised photographs held in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

The photographs in the collection were all taken by male western photographers of Bethlehem women. In different ways they reflect the ways in which these photographers romanticised and fetishised Bethlehem women. It was a common trope in travel accounts written by European and North American men to emphasise how beautiful the women in Bethlehem were. Many of the photographs here are re-enactments of biblical scenes, confirming the extent to which Bethlehem women were scene through a specifically western biblical lens.