Unsettled Cameras: Jewish Culture and Contexts

Explores how global photographic practices shaped inner-Jewish debates of Zionist nation-building in Mandate Palestine

Unsettled Cameras explores the central role of photography in shaping Zionist politics between 1917 and 1948. It argues that photography was not merely a tool for documentation, but a powerful medium of political communication used to make the claim for Jewish national self-determination visible--both locally and globally. Drawing on a wide range of visual and textual sources, Rebekka Grossmann shows how political functionaries, photographers, and journalists used images to construct and contest ideas of Jewish belonging in Palestine.

The book introduces mobility--of people, images, and ideas--as a key analytical framework, revealing how visual representations circulated across borders and influenced international perceptions of Zionism. It highlights the transnational character of Jewish nationalism and its entanglement with British imperial infrastructures, global media networks, and international Jewish organizations. Moreover, the book also reveals how visual media facilitated debate, dissent, and alternative visions of Jewish identity and statehood--highlighting its nature as an active site of political engagement shaped by global artistic discourses and local collaboration.

By placing photography at the heart of modern Jewish and Middle Eastern political history, Unsettled Cameras offers a new perspective on the politics of visibility and public relations of the Zionist project. It reframes our understanding of nationalism, media, and visual culture in the context of colonialism and global communication.