The Biblical Scholar’s Viewpoint. Moments of Eternity

The exhibition The Biblical Scholar’s Viewpoint. Moments of Eternity recovers old photographs taken by a Biblical scholar and monk from Montserrat. He is known simply as Father Ubach, but the full name of this cleric who was born in Barcelona in 1879 and died in Montserrat in 1960 was Bonaventura Ubach. He was a Bible scholar who wanted to delve so deeply into his studies that he began to make trips to the Middle East and the Holy Land at the beginning of the last century. What did he see there? He shows us himself, through the photographs that he took there, exhibited at the Capella de Santa Àgata in the Plaça del Rei between 14 September and 7 January.

Ubach, who had entered the monastery in 1894 and was ordained a priest in 1902, learned Greek, Hebrew, and Eastern languages in order to expand his research. And, when he had enough knowledge of them, he began to travel through Syria, Iraq, the Sinai and, especially, Palestine, where he obtained images and collected a set of archaeological objects that can be seen today at the Museum of Montserrat. The monk managed to immortalise a biblical world that has been erased over the years.

In total he took about 6,000 photographs between 1922 and 1951, some of which were used in a large Bible project (the Bíblia Grossa de Montserrat, an exhaustive translation of the text into Catalan) in which he invested great efforts.

The images by this cleric, almost ethnographic in nature, show biblical landscapes, archaeological remains, and a variety of monuments, but also portray the ways of life of the Bedouins and the Christian and Muslim communities, as well as the ceremonies and rituals that were practiced in those lands (shown, women and girls from Palestine in one of the images that can be seen at the exhibition).

Finally, the exhibition includes a selection of other images of the same settings in addition to those by Father Ubach, which are the work of other photographers and come from journalistic archives or commercial companies.

The exhibition, organised by the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed) and the Abbey of Montserrat, presents 86 of the most representative photographs from the collection of Father Ubach. The IEMed is a member of the MUHBA Circle.