Bert de Vries collection
Bert de Vries (1939 – 2021) was ACOR’s Director from 1988-1991. The Bert de Vries photo collection consists of 840 images from the 1980s and 90s. Bert’s long term project in Jordan has been at Umm el-Jimal in North Jordan, a site he first visited in 1968, later excavated in the 70s and 80s, and continued to work at until his death in early 2021. Umm el-Jimal is the spectacularly preserved ruin of a Late Antique (Byzantine, Umayyad, and early Abbasid) basalt town in the Hauran of northern Jordan. There are still 150 buildings at Umm el-Jimal, made from basalt blocks which were recycled from the ruins of earlier Nabataean and Roman structures. As Bert said, ‘as Petra is “rose red”, Umm el-Jimal is “all in black”.
