Featuring photography by Prof. William E. James stereo photographer for the Quaker City Excursion summer of 1867, and early Brooklyn, New York photography 1859-1873. The voyage, also known as the Quaker City Expedition to the Orient, The Mediterranean Excursion, and The Holy Land Excursion, was an extensive sea and land journey through Europe and the Holy Land. Passenger Mark Twain later wrote, "Innocence Abroad" detailing the trip. Captured in clear and vivid stereo photography and used for educational purposes in Sunday schools the first set listed 60 stereoviews in the series and were published by A. O. Van Lennep, George W. Thorne, and William B. Holmes. An additional 67+ views of Europe and the Holy Land were later published that were either the same view at a slightly different angle or an entirely different view.

By newspaper accounts Mr. W. E. James held the chair as vice president of the newly formed "Brooklyn Photographic Society" when they held their first public meeting in July of 1864. His gallery was located at No. 267 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. and although he advertised "Portraits Taken", he was devoted to stereo photography and spent much of his time in the field extensively photographing Utica, Brooklyn, and the newly developing Prospect Park in Brooklyn among other things. At the end of the Civil War, as a member of the Oceanus Excursion his photography documented the destruction of Charleston, and Beecher's Oration at Fort Sumter. After Lincoln's assassination, Ford's Theater, The Whitehouse, and the Funeral Procession down Broadway were captured as "instantaneous views", a newly devised procedure in which the exposure time required to set the gelatin plate was less than one second.