Fr. Vester & Co. This curio shop once owned by Frederic Vester was purchased at the turn of the 20th century by a group of Christians who moved in to Palestine from the United States, where they banded together to form a commune that became known as the American Colony in Jerusalem. Elijah Meyers had been an early photographer of this group but the Colony's photo operations did not begin in earnest until 1898 when Kaiser Wilhelm II’s visit to Jerusalem was documented. The American Colony Photo Department was established as a commercial enterprise of the colony. Over the next three and a half decades its photographers documented key events and ceremonies as well as everyday life, travel, architecture, street scenes and landscapes of the Middle East, as well as pictorial allegorical images of the Holy Land and the events of World War I, the end of the Ottoman Empire and the administration of the early British Mandate. Staff photographers, photographic assistants, and darkroom and print production experts in the first decades of operation included American Colony members Elijah Meyers (1851-1930), Furman Baldwin, Lewis Larsson, Lars Lind, Erik Lind, Olaf Lind, and Fareed Naseef, and in later years, G. Eric Matson. The photo operations at the Colony store, Fr. Vester & Co. had already been taken over in 1934 when it became the Matson Photo Service. Though the Matsons moved to California in 1946, the business continued to operate in Jerusalem into the 1950’s. The Matsons continued to sell inventory out of California into the 1970’s.