Bidspirit auction | (PHOTOGRAPHY). Jerusalem. James Graham. Wailing

(PHOTOGRAPHY). Jerusalem. James Graham. Wailing Wall, Jerusalem. 1850s. Albumen Print from a waxed paper negative (26 x 20 cm; 10.5 x 8 inches), signed with initials in the negative, on original card mount (47 x 31 cm; 18.5 x 12.5 inches). Pencil caption at foot of mount reads: ”Jerusalem, wall of the Temple area at which the Jews wail every Friday.” The print is overall rich in color and a good tonal range. There is some light spotting and dust-staining to the mount and a slight nick to lower left corner of the print. 1850s. A FINE EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF THE WESTERN WALL, JERUSALEM.     James Graham's photographs are ”extremely rare as he never became a commercial photographer” (Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography).     James Graham (1806-69) was a Scottish photographer and lay missionary who arrived in Jerusalem in 1853 and stayed until 1857. His photographs of Jerusalem and the Holy Land are among the earliest paper photographs taken in the region,  following the first calotypes of Jerusalem made by 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.