William James (1866, Walsall, England–1948, Toronto)

In 1917, at the height of the First World War, William James (1866–1948) made a hand-coloured lantern slide depicting a group of women munitions workers. The image highlights his characteristic interest in the way historic events affected the people of his adopted city of Toronto, where he worked as the city’s first press photographer.

When James migrated to Canada from England in 1906 seeking a better life, he arrived with his wife, five children, and seven dollars. After doing a variety of jobs, he turned his passion for photography into an occupation.  During the day, he walked the streets of Toronto, taking pictures of the activities of urban life. At night, he developed images to sell to local newspapers the following morning. Between 1909 and the late 1930s, hundreds of his photographs were published in newspapers and magazines, including Toronto World, the Toronto Daily Star, and Chatelaine.  At one point, he was selling his pictures to all seven of the city’s papers.

James knew all the other photographers in the city and his images of newsmen at the ready, such as Newsreel and Press Photographers, Queen’s Park, 1911, show his enthusiasm for the new profession. He was the founding president of the Canadian Photographers Association, the country’s first organization of press photographers, and he influenced a younger generation of photographers, teaching three of his sons (Joseph, William Jr., and Norman), as well as local boys the Turofskys, who became well-known sports photographers.

A technically skilled and innovative photographer, James tested different kinds of film and invented a developer to eliminate grain in his photographs. He produced beautiful hand-painted glass lantern slides, built his own cameras, and worked with telephoto and wide-angle lenses. He even wrote articles about his experiments with camera technology and chemistry.

James specialized in human interest subject matter, and his willingness to do whatever it took to get the picture is evident from his many photographic adventures. He worked upside down with his Speed Graphic camera to photograph the first cable car to run across the whirlpool rapids of the Niagara River. He flew in dirigible airships and was the first photographer in Canada to make aerial movies, which he shot from the open cockpit of a biplane.  And when balloonists went off course in northern Ontario, “a mishap which caused a news sensation… William James was the first photographer on hand to record their rescue.”

Although James did not write about his intentions as a photographer, his images suggest he was motivated to make striking pictures that told a story in a single frame, and according to his son, Norman, who became a press photographer for the Toronto Star, William James hoped his photographs would have historical value.  His archive includes countless eye-catching images of everyday events that skillfully convey the essence of an event.