Three Jerusalemite Boys Posing on a Road with Their Arms Linked

Frank Scholten was an artist born into a devout Catholic family from Amsterdam who traveled to Palestine in 1921–23 as a self-funded amateur photographer. He traveled around the country, including in Jerusalem, and amassed a large volume of work, including diverse scenes of daily life in Palestine at that time, which was a period of transition from Ottoman rule to British. His goal was to illustrate the Bible, filling a gap that he identified, as the Bible and religion generally had not hitherto been a subject for photography. In the process, he also shot many landscapes, cityscapes, and portraits such as this one.