Jerusalem—James Graham | Photograph of the Wailing Wall, Jerusalem, 1850s

Jerusalem—James Graham

Wailing Wall, Jerusalem. 1850s

albumen print from a waxed paper negative (261 x 200mm.), signed with initials in the negative, on original card mount (472 x 310mm.), pencil caption at foot of mount, light spotting to mount, slight nick to lower left corner of print

A FINE EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF THE WAILING WALL IN JERUSALEM. Graham's photographs are "extremely rare as he never became a commercial photographer" (Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography).

James Graham (1806-1869) was a Scottish photographer and lay missionary who arrived in the Jerusalem in 1853 and stayed until 1857. His photographs of Jerusalem and the Holy Land are among some of the earliest paper photographs taken in the region, following the first calotypes of Jerusalem made by Rev. George Bridges in 1850. During his stay in Palestine, Graham photographed the region from Syria and Lebanon in the north to Egypt. He met the artists William Holman Hunt and Thomas Seddon who visited the Near East, and accompanied them in their journeys, taking photographs while they were painting.

The pencil caption on the mount written in an unidentified hand reads "Jerusalem, wall of the Temple area at which the Jews wail every Friday."