I’m having to radically revise my archive/gallery schema now that I’m living in Jerusalem for the next three years. I used to just organize photos by trip or event: Jordan, Syria, Norway, Immigration Rally, Peace Protest, etc. But now that I’ll be in one place for a while, taking my camera almost everywhere,  it doesn’t make sense to make one big gallery for Palestine/Israel, or to have many tiny galleries for the “events” of every other day. So while I figure that out, here are some recent street shots I’ve taken as I get warmed up….

Jaffa Street, West Jerusalem

Separation barrier, Bethlehem, West Bank.

Ka’ak vendor, Old City of Jerusalem

Bus stop, East Jerusalem

Olive branches and separation barrier, Bethlehem, West Bank.

… Or maybe I just don’t go to the same kinds of protests anymore. When I decided to embark on the massive project of building a complete online archive of my work more than a year ago, these were some of the very photos I anticipated unearthing. These photos of an anti-sweatshop protest at the Georgetown Gap stores are the kinds of pictures I took because I wanted to cover the event, but had no real prospects for publishing at the time. Now they’re finally seeing the light after being buried in negative binders for the last decade or so, and will hopefully find some use at least in the microstock world.

I’m still learning the happy medium between getting photos posted right away after an event, and doing a good job of retouching, keywording, and captioning at the same time. But I did want to get some posted on the Sojourners blog at God’s Politics, so here’s a link to that post. And here’s a slide show link. And here are some of my favorite shots from the day:

I’ve just uploaded another archive gallery of storm damage and volunteer work in Biloxi, Mississippi, a year after Hurricane Katrina. Some favorites:

I continue my march backwards through my photo archives, nearing the end of my digital files. (Then, on to—gasp—scanning negatives!) Here are some selections from my time in New Orleans about a year after Hurricane Katrina:

Last week I went to two different rallies–one for health-care reform, the other, the DC event of the International Day of Climate Action. The galleries are now online–here are some favorites:

Getting in line at 2:00 in the afternoon was completely worth it. I was two spots from the front rail at the U2 show at FedEx Field. Though I didn’t risk taking my D90, I did get some pretty decent shots with my point-and-shoot—a Canon PowerShot A570IS. Here are some favorites from the gallery:

I also caught the Charlottesville, VA, show—this time in the reserved seats a little farther away. So I took a few shots there to get a sense of the amazing set:

And with my Syria photos posted, I think that makes the last of my Middle East sabbatical galleries to go online. Our time in Syria was especially unique because we weren’t there to document development projects, but more to do “contexting” as our friends at Questscope say—learning about regional culture and history, with a particular focus on the legacy of Christianity in the region. This included everything from Christian communities dating back to the time of the apostles that still speak Aramaic, to crusader castles, to the multiplicity of Arab Christian churches in Syria and beyond.

By far the most significant experience of this trip was our overnight stay at the Mar Musa monastery—on the top of a desert mountain. It’s both an ancient Christian monastery but also a living, vibrant, spiritual community where today many young Syrians and international pilgrims come to retreat and fellowship. Here’s a photo showing the winding hike up, and a few other highlights from our Syrian sojourn:

Mar Musa monastery

Krak de Chevalier, crusader castle

Desert road sign

Prayer at the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus

Courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque.

Spice shopping at the Damascus Souq.

Happy camel

+ See the rest of the gallery

I’m tempted to put “FINALLY!” in the title, since my sabbatical was more than a month ago, but as I’ve prefaced each of my other recent gallery postings—I had to work through all of my Questscope and MCC images first. So here’s a link to  the gallery of images from Jordan that do not include Questscope projects, including quite a few from Petra. My favorites—which for some reason are all vertical:

Red Sea beach at Aqaba.

The Siq at Petra

The Treasury at Petra

Kite flying in Amman

Pigeons over Amman skyline at dusk

Steeple and Minaret, Cross and Crescent, Amman

+See the rest of the gallery

In most cases in Occupied Palestine at this point, Palestinian refugees live in UN-administered camps that are essentially urban slums—overcrowded apartment blocks with high rates of poverty. But there are still some refugees that live in tents. Case in point—when I posted my favorite images from  my recently posted Israel-Palestine gallery, I included this one of Fawzieh al-Kurd:

She has lived in a tent within sight of her home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem since November  2008 when Israeli settlers took over her home with the help of Israeli police. Her husband died of a heart attack two weeks later. She’s been encamped here since on a patch of ground owned by a Palestinian who has given her permission to stay there—within sight of the home that had originally been built for her by Jordan and the UN in 1956 for her and other refugees who had been forced from their original homes when the state of Israel was established in 1948. (Read a more detailed account of her struggle, written by an Israeli-American activist, here.)

That is, until a few days ago. On his way to church on Sunday, MCC rep. Ryan Lehman took photos and posted them on Facebook, showing a vacant lot where her tent had been, now full of Israeli police vans. Apparently they have demolished her tent once again—making this the seventh time they’ve done so.

Two other families were removed from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, a move that has received far more international press coverage and strongly worded statements from the international community. We’ll see if those condemnations are backed up with actions that inspire the Israeli government to change its policy.