A mission to 'ennoble Photography': Julia Margaret Cameron

Q. Never heard of her. Who was she

A. Julia Margaret Cameron (n�e Pattle) was an English photographer known for her portraits of eminent people of the day and for her romantic and artistic pictures which, despite their technical imperfections, stand the test of time.

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Born into a well-to-do British family in Calcutta in 1815, she was educated in France and England. She returned to India and in 1838 she married Charles Hay Cameron, a distinguished jurist, who also owned coffee plantations in Ceylon. She had six children, born between 1839 and 1852. In 1848 the Cameron family settled in England, living first in London and from 1860 at Freshwater, Isle of Wight. In 1875 they returned to Ceylon, where she died in 1879.

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In 1864, at the age of 48, Cameron was given her first camera by two of her daughters, to help occupy her time while her husband and sons were on the family coffee estates. Amazingly, she embraced photography with an avidity that bordered on obsession, turning her greenhouse into a dark-room and making a name for herself as the female photographer of the age.

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Q. Was she any good

A. Cameron had a tremendous capacity to visualise a picture, and her portraits show a measure of vitality which the work of many others of the time did not. However, she did have many detractors.

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Q. So, the argument against

A. It has to be said that she was not the best of technicians. Some of her negatives show uneven coating of collodion and above all, dust particles and even fingerprints. A critical entry in the Photographic Journal commented: 'Mrs Cameron will do better when she has learned the proper use of her apparatus.'

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Lewis Carroll commented in a similar vein: 'In the evening Mrs Cameron and I had a mutual exhibition of photographs. Hers are all taken purposely out of focus - some are very picturesque - some merely hideous - however, she talks of them as if they were triumphs of art.'

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Q. The Lewis Carroll

A. The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - Lewis Carroll - was a highly accomplished photographer and a major collector of photographic works. In fact, much of the evidence cited by those who accuse him of paedophilia, latent or otherwise, is to be found in the subject matter of much of his collection. For more on this see the answerbank article on Carroll.

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Q. And the arguments for

A. Cameron regarded recent technical developments in photography, including such forms as carte-de-visite portraiture, as threats to established values of photographic representation. She inscribed her photographs as 'From Life' and refused to retouch defects on the negative, believing that would compromise the authenticity of the actual connection between the photographic negative and her subject.

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Her controversial soft-focus technique gave animation and breadth to her forms and rejected the perfection of detail prized in commercial photography, and her expressive and symbolic uses of lighting created atmospheric depth absent in moat commercial portraiture. She considered photography to be an art equivalent in value to painting, somewhat unusual at the time.

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The French poet Victor Hugo wrote to her: 'No one has ever captured the rays of the sun and used them as you have. I throw myself at your feet.' So she did have her admirers.

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Q. What's the Pre-Raphaelite connection Weren't they painters

A. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of painters, yes, but Cameron's photography bears comparison with them. Her images were strongly influenced by their work and ethos, and nowhere more so than in her costume pieces illustrating religious, literary, poetic and mythological themes.

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Q. So who and what did she photograph

A. In her bust portraits of notable Victorian men, Cameron referred to ideal types and to compositions from 'Old Master' paintings to communicate her idea of heroic individuals with intimacy and psychological intensity. Among her most famous portraits are those of the scientist Sir John Herschel and her friend Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

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She also produced narrative photographs, derived from tableaux-vivants and amateur theatricals, which dealt largely with women, in particular with idealisations of the roles of wife and mother. However, her major work of narrative photographs was her illustrations to Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Other Poems (1874-5), published in two volumes, in which she represented the female characters of Camelot, particularly Guinevere.

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Q. Was she well received in her day

A. Cameron received honours abroad, but recognition did not come easily at home. Luckily, she was not obliged to earn a living from her photographs, though she did hope that sales would aid her family's ailing finances. In her search for sitters and for reviewers of her work, she drew upon her extensive contacts among the Victorian intelligentsia, many of whom wrote favourable notices about her work for prominent journals, and this riled a number of influential people.

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The Arts and Crafts Movement greatly admired her work, and she was 'rediscovered' by the Photo-Secessionist photographers, headed by Alfred Stieglitz in the early 20th century.

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For more on Arts & Literature click here

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By Simon Smith