TypeAgencyParallel NameGraham Charles StewartDate Range1932-2025DescriptionGraham was regarded as New Zealand's leading street transport historian, a prolific photographer and author of several books on New Zealand trams. His father, W W Stewart (Bill Stewart) was New Zealand’s leading steam railway historian, a photographer and author of many books on steam railways in this country, until his passing in the mid-1970s.
Graham's first job was as a photo-journalist with the New Zealand Herald and The Weekly News. He then went on to the Napier Daily Telegraph and then returned to the Herald as illustrations editor in the 1960s. As a news photographer he covered the 1951 waterfront strike, Ed Hillary's wedding in September 1953 and travelled in royal cavalcades with the Queen (1953) and the Queen Mother (1958). He also covered the Tangiwai railway disaster in 1953.
Graham also established the publishing company Grantham House, which specialises in pictorial histories. He served as a trustee of the New Zealand Centre for Photography, Ronald McDonald House, and the Wellington City Mission.
Graham will be remembered as the godfather of the heritage tramway movement in NZ, the tramway museums of today largely coming about through his efforts in saving the best of what remained when the various city tramways were axed in the 1950-1960s.
Graham's numerous books on public transport and tramways are possibly eclipsed by his huge photographic record he started as a young man and so willingly shared. From the late 1940s, he recorded New Zealand’s urban transport and social history, and among his published works were the books When Trams were Trumps in New Zealand, Kelburn Cable Car: 100 years of Service, and New Zealand — Portrait of a Nation.
