About the Kidner Collection

The Kidner collection consists of over 23,000 photographs donated by professor Frank Kidner, professor emeritus at San Francisco State University, that document his travels throughout the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. The photos were largely taken in the 1990s and focus on architectural remains. Syria is the predominant geographic focus of the Kidner collection, however, Egypt, Tunisia, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon also represent notable elements of the photographic assemblage. Most of the Syrian images depict Late Roman/Early Byzantine sites, but Kidner also photographed areas of interest related to the Bronze Age, Islamic, and Crusader periods.

Many people contributed to the cataloging and description of this collection. The work was led by Postdoctoral Fellows Stephanie Caruso, Konstantina Karterouli, and Justin Mann, with project management by Bettina Smith, manager of the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives. Numerous individual images were cataloged by Harvard interns and Humanities Fellows: Emily Axelsen, Isabella Beroutsos, Lydia Cawley, Natalie Cohen, Abena Duker, Elizabeth Duncan, Adela Kim, Lindiwe Makgalemele, Kate Moran, and Ariana Tyler; as well as Dumbarton Oaks Staff Jessica Cebra, Katherine Griffin, and Wendy Johnson.