'One Man's Covenants', unpublished autobiographical work

'One Man's Covenants' is an autobiographical work by Rosen recording his experiences of visits to Israel in the 1980s and his relationship with 'God's covenant with the Jews'. In the first chapter for the final version he says: 'In 1980 I made several trips to the Sinai in preparation for an exhibition on 'Exodus'. Some art work was produced, but the major endeavour turned into a written study of 'Coincidence and Creativity'. Coincidences occurred repeatedly, in this as in other previous phases of creativity and I was led to studying them scientifically which meant recording them daily for months. In 1982 as a spin-off of these trips, my photographs of the Sinai were shown in three successful photographic exhibitions entitled 'The Sinai as Inspiration'...Being in the Sinai intensified my awareness of the Mosaic covenant...My artistic attention changed direction from Exodus to illustrating all the Bibilical covenants. Creating sculptures and paintings can be a lenghty and difficult business. To facilitate the work of illustration I opted for the idea of photographing the places and customs associated with the covenants with the new aim of producing a picture book with comments...The first format for the book consisted of photographs, alongside which there would be relevant Biblical quotations and comments explaining the modern significance. William Frankel....agreed to write the comments.' At first Rosen was relieved at divesting the responsibility for the comments to someone else and he could just take photos, however the experience of photographing the covenants changed this. A publisher Stanley Baron of Thames and Hudson expressed an interest in the project, especially the pictures which had to be superb. Rosen continues: 'The ending of the second tour to Israel heralded great changes in the format of the book. The experiences of Masada and of the people and the State of Israel determined that I should widen the scope of the book to include what I regarded as modern covenants. The immediate result of this was that William Frankel withdrew on the grounds that the term 'covenant' referred purely to the Bibilical text. I felt it was important to record my experiences photographing the covenants, and so I embarked upon the lonely lengthy task of writing. Stanley Baron, unable to make sense of my jumbled notes, felt that he would be unable to act as publisher, as did others...The difficulties of writing sprang from the innate resistances to revealing one's own inner life and experience...problem was not so much what to say, but what to put in and what leave out. For years I tinkered formulating introductions, with each becoming more abstractedly irrelevant...' In the end Rosen got an appointment to see Paul Gottlieb of Abrams Books in New York on 29 Jul 1988. However he managed to delete his manuscript and arrived with just the pictures. However, he persevered with the book.

The basic writing of 'One Man's Covenants' was completed 30 March 1989 and Rosen got the finished processed manuscript a week later when changing planes in Johannesberg for London. (See PP/ROS/H/3/31).

It is possible that some of the files in this series are actually re-workings of chapters from 'The Covenents' for the final autobiography, 'Along the Way', athough this is not always clear from the papers themselves.

For pictorial sources for the book see section PP/ROS/M/5. For material on the exhibition 'The Sinai as Inspiration' see PP/ROS/L/4.

c.1981-1992

9 boxes

It is often difficult to tell which version or revision is which or is associated with which due to the condition the papers were found in. It is possible that versions have been mis arranged and the order of the files is not meant to indicate a definitive development of the book.