James Graham (1806–1869) was a Scottish photographer who took some of the earliest images of the
Holy Land, where he was sent as lay secretary for the
London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews.
Graham, a former director of a Glasgow bank, having learnt the basics of photography, arrived in Jerusalem in December 1853 and stayed there for two-and-a-half years, taking lodgings in a tower on the Mount of Olives. While there he was visited by artists including
Thomas Seddon and
William Holman Hunt
William Holman Hunt (2 April 1827 – 7 September 1910) was an English painter and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, vivid colour, and elaborate symbolis ...
, both of whom seem to have used his photographs as reference material for their paintings.
[Staley and Newell 2004, p.117]
When he exhibited photographs, he would often write an appropriate quotation from the Bible on the mount.
During his time in Jerusalem he taught photography to the Russian-born
Mendel John Diness, who had been converted from Judaism, and baptised in 1849 by the British consul
James Finn, as found in "Palestine and Egypt Under the Ottomans" By
Hisham Khatib.
He was the author of a pamphlet called ''Jerusalem; its Missions, Schools, Converts etc. under Bishop Gobat'' published in London in 1858.
See also
*
Mendel Diness, a pupil of Graham in Jerusalem
References
Sources
*
1806 births
1869 deaths
19th-century Scottish photographers
Photographers in Palestine (region)
{{UK-photographer-stub