“Beauty, you’re under arrest. I have a camera, and I’m not afraid to use it.” – Julia Margaret Cameron
Darkroom work first
Julia Margaret Cameron printed photos in the darkroom before she owned a camera. She printed a negative taken by Swedish art photographer O.G. Rejlander. Before exposing the paper, she made a border around the negative with ferns. This combination became an image made in the camera and in the darkroom without a camera at the same time. She loved to experiment with the relatively new medium.
Living in Freshwater
Julia Margaret Cameron lived on the Isle of Wight. she had many friends near her at Freshwater. Her neighbor was the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. Others in her circle of friends included the poets Robert Browning and Henry Taylor and the scientist, Charles Darwin (opening photo, bottom row, last image.)
“It may amuse you”
It was 1863 and Julia Margaret Cameron got a camera from her daughter and son-in-law as a gift when she was 48 years old. Her daughter told her as she presented the camera telling her, “It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater.”
At this time, photography was hard physical work. The chemicals to coat the glass plate negatives and develop them could be very dangerous. Cameron worked with 10 by 12-inch glass plates which she coated in the darkroom and exposed them in her camera before they dried. Once an exposure was made the glass plate went back to the darkroom where it was developed, washed, and varnished. Prints were made by exposing the negative placed on top of light-sensitive photo paper in direct sunlight.
Glass plates presented photographers with problems. They had to be meticulously clean. They had to be kept away from dust from exposure to printing. They had to be perfectly coated and put into chemical baths at various times. The chemistry had to be fresh.
First success
Julia Margaret Cameron was hooked on taking pictures as soon as she received her camera. It took a month for her to make the photograph she called her “first success.” It was a portrait of Annie Philpot, the daughter of a family visiting the Isle of Wight. She wrote about her achievement, “I was in a transport of delight. I ran all over the house to search for gifts for the child. I felt as if she entirely had made the picture” (opening photo, top row, last image.)
“I believe that… my first successes in my out-of-focus pictures were a fluke. That is to say, that when focusing and coming to something which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped there instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers insist upon… ”
Alice of wonderland
Alice Liddel was the muse that mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson who under the pen name of Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland which was published in 1865.
Alice and her sisters were visiting on the Isle of Wight where they met Julia Margaret Cameron. She made several photographs of them in the 1870s. She portrayed Alice as different classical characters including the goddess Pomona who had the fringe of hair that appeared in the illustrations of her in the wonderland stories (opening photo, bottom row, first image.) Cameron photographed the sisters as the Three Graces, the mythological depiction of the daughters of Zeus (opening photo, bottom row, second image.)
The Photographic Journal
Julia Margaret Cameron’s work was not accepted by everyone. A review in The Photographic Journal said, “Mrs. Cameron exhibits her series of out-of-focus portraits of celebrities. We must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at the expense of all other photographic qualities. A true artist would employ all the resources at his disposal, in whatever branch of art he might practise. In these pictures, all that is good in photography has been neglected and the shortcomings of the art are prominently exhibited. We are sorry to have to speak thus severely on the works of a lady, but we feel compelled to do so in the interest of the art.”
The Illustrated London News on the other hand called her photographs, “the nearest approach to art, or rather the most bold and successful applications of the principles of fine-art to photography.” Many artists of the time loved what the photographic purists called poor technique and “slovenly manipulation.”
Cameron dismissed the photographic establishment writing she was not upset “had I not valued that criticism at its worth.” Rather she relished the praise and positive judgements of artists and her friends.
First artist in residence
Julia Margaret Cameron’s first exhibit of her work was shown in 1865 at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert.) The museum was the only one to show her work during her lifetime. The museum collected her photographs extensively at the time. Currently the V&A holds the largest collection of her prints.
In 1868, the museum gave Cameron the use of two rooms as a portrait studio making her the very first artist in residence.
Julia Margaret Cameron video
Step into the archives of the Victoria and Albert museum to learn more about the photographer in this two and a half minute video.
Sources: The Met, The Victoria and Albert Museum,
Well done to Julia, she dared to be different in a man’s world, and whilst many who criticized her have long been forgotten she has been remembered for her beautiful work.