If you're looking for Christmas cards that are a little different, check out the new range of Christmas cards on offer at 'The Nazareth Village Project'
The cards display photos of authentic looking Nativity scenes. Click here for more details.
Photo © 'Nazareth Village Project' 2007
6 comments:
What a fascinating project Graham. Life would have been harsh for the average family. I think Jesus' parables must always be read with the living and work conditions of the people he was addressing in mind. The 'prosperity' gospel that is so popular with TV evangelists today is an obscene distortion of what prosperity meant to 1st century citizens. Not money, flash cars, 25 room houses and swimming pools but the basic necessities to make life more comfortable.
This project brings home the realities of life in Jesus' time. It has nothing to do with luxury.
Hey Graham,
My wife found this little book called the "Standard Bible Story Readers" it was by a Lillie A. Faris and the one we found was book 3 and published in the 1920's. The art in it is real classic stuff so I did a search for others and found this site http://www.lavistachurchofchrist.org/Pictures/Standard%20Bible%20Story%20Reader,%20Book%20Three/index.html (sorry dont know how to do a proper link in the comment section) which seems to have all the art from the series of five books. Have you ever heard of the series before?
Yes Paul, many Bible illustrators, including myself, tend not to accurately show the levels of poverty that would have been present in Bible times. We tend to sanitize the scenes, clothes look clean and pressed, and buildings are built with finished stone blocks etc. The Nativity scene is a good example of this. We show a lovely warm comfy stable, full of well dressed shepherds!
Sometimes we use brighter colors than we should as they appeal to children, (and Bible publishers!) but this can give the pictures a clean unauthentic feel.
The film industry, on the other hand, has done a good job in recent years of capturing the gritty authentic Bible scenes.
Hello ArtistXero
Yes, I already have a link on the blog to the 'La-vista Church of Christ' picture collection. They are very good! As you probably know the artists for this range of books were O A Stemlar & Bess Bruce Cleveland.
Many of O A Stemlar's pictures were used in the 1987 edition of 'The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes' which we have a soft spot for, as it was the one we read every night to our children when they were tots!
ha..I should've known you already knew about that. You are the bible art guru.
I'm not sure about the Bible art guru! lol!
'Bible Art' sounds very grand and important!
I'm more interested in Bible illustration, although I'm not sure if you can separate the two!
Post a Comment