On October 14, 1970, an explosion ripped through the attic of a stately brick building on Divinity Ave. Activists protecting the war in Vietnam had planted a tomb in Henry A. Kissinger's former office at the Center for International Affairs, housed in the Harvard Semitic Museum.

Kissinger had long since gone, and the damage was limited--but the blast's impact was far from insignificant. The museum had closed its doors to the public 28 years earlier, and many of its treasures lay forgotten in its dusty storage rooms.

As Curator Carney E. V. Gavin sifted through the blast's aftermath, however, he discovered a long-lost photographic collection that would spur the museum's revival and prompt one of its most ambitious projects in decades.

Packed in dozens of faded crimson boxes were 28,000 photographs of the Middle East by well-known 19th century photographers.

Ten years after Gavin's find, a local physician and amateur photographer traveled to Israel to retrace the steps of the 19th century artists. At Gavin's suggestion, Dr. Daniel Tassel set out to create a "then and now" photographic history of the Holy Land. Nitza Rosovsky, a museum officer and authority on 19th century Jerusalem, assisted Tassel with the project.

By the spring of 1983, Tassel had shot enough photographs to allow a preliminary showing of his exhibit. "The Holy Land Then and Now," at the Semitic Museum. An expanded form of the exhibit moved to Israel in 1984, where it is currently on display at the Haifa Museum.

The photographs depict historically significant sites and panoramic views of Israel's landscape.

"We immediately adopted the project and began perusing through the pictures freed by the bomb blast. We selected images that, by virtue of their innate beauty, historical interest, or charm were particularly appealing to us," Tassel says.

Among the works chosen by Tassel and Rosovsky were a number of prints by the French Bonfils family. Felix Bonfils, who settled in Beirut, began a well-known collection of photographs in 1967.

Like most of his contemporaries, Bonfils suffered from the combination of primitive photographic techniques and the oppressive climate of the Middle East. "He often looked on in frustration as his photographic chemicals fizzled away before his eyes," Rosovsky says. Despite the adverse conditions, "he and his family produced thousands of beautiful works," she adds.

Rosovsky and Tassel also selected several photographs by Francis Frith, a greengrocer who left his, shop in Liverpool in 1858 to take pictures of the Holly Land, and others by Sgt. James McDonald, who made his "Ordinance Survey of Jerusalem" for the British Army in 1857.

"Accompained by pocket-sized copies of the 'then' photos, which I had made to help select the best vantage point for my 'now' photos, and by Nitza's location instructions, I began to photograph in Israel in the summer of 1981," Tassel says.

During three trips to Israel, Tassel shot thousands of rolls of film, which later yielded hundreds of prints and dozens of "then" and "now" pairs.

When his 19th century predecessors attempted to photograph the Holly Land, they met unexpected resistance, Tassel says. As Christians, they did not understand the hostility of the native Arabs and Jews who were forbidden to create "graven images," he explains.

A century, later, Tassel met a more hospitable reception. "When I began to photograph, human barriers disappeared. Christians, Moslems and Jews, the ordinary and the more sophisticated--all were awed by the pocket images of their homes, shops, or places of worship as they looked 100 or more years ago," he says.