An Unforgettable Recollection

A journey of Leo Boer

In this archive you will experience the journey of the late Leo Boer (1926-2009). As a student for the priesthood in Rome in the mid-1950s, he had the opportunity to stay in Jerusalem for one year (1953-1954), at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem. Together with his lecturers and fellow-students, Boer visited numerous archaeological sites in the Levant.

During his journey he kept diaries and took hundreds of photographs, which were developed only many decades later. They turned out to be a treasure of information of a time where little was photographed of places where much has changed over the years. With this material eleven students of the University of Arts Utrecht (HKU) set up a project to present Leo’s journey in their own way.

The NPAPH project is also grateful to the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Library of the University of Haifa who digitized all the photo negatives in 2020 and made the photo collection accessible online in 2021.