This March, the Middle East Studies department at Brown University, Rhode Island is hosting an exhibition – Time Machine: Stereoscopic Views from Palestine, 1900 – that invites spectators to become time travellers. Drawing on 100 images taken in 1900 of Palestine and the surrounding ‘Holy Land’, the collection – curated by Ariella Azoulay and Issam Nassar – raises a set of fascinating questions about photography, memory and history and how these feature in and inform not only our understanding of the experiences of those displaced in the past, but also our responses to and experiences of displacement in the present. Refugee Host’s Co-I Lyndsey Stonebridge and our Writer in Residence Yousif M. Qasmiyeh were invited to contribute to the project. Together, they responded to stereoscopic photograph number 26: you can see the photograph, and their side by side responses – which featured as part of the exhibition – below.

“The New Cavalry” Outside the Damascus Gate, from the Northern Wall: A Response

By Lyndsey Stonebridge and Yousif M. Qasmiyeh

The text accompanying the image – from Travelling in the Holy Land through Stereoscope which was published by Underwood and Underwood in 1900

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We would like to thank Issam Nassar, Ariella Azoulay and all of their colleagues at Brown University for allowing us to share this photograph, and Yousif and Lyndsey’s responses to it. For more information on the exhibition click here.